alt Hacker NewsI've come to the opinion that for the vast majority of apps I've built, it could all be built using HTML + CSS (all built server side). I can sprinkle in little bits of interactivity using something like HTMX. And I'll have a website that is very easy to optimise, has phenomenal backwards compatibility, and gets rid of a whole class of issues associated with SPAs.
I often regret in my career not pushing back more on "requirements" that ended up requiring a more complicated app, whereas the customer would have been happier with a simpler solution.
I guess you're right, but it's more of a curve, though. Once you get to any decent level of complexity, it actually helps to have a framework instead of just going all HTML+CSS. Also it helps having something standard as react (that every web developer should fundamentally understand) than doing your custom stuff if other people will be working on it in the future.
There's a lot to say about the side effects of frameworks but there's a reason why everything converges towards that.