alt Hacker NewsSSG is solved for in React. The user is going to cope with a few extra KB of JavaScript just fine. Just like they cope when they watch Youtube or stream or w/e all day long. It's 2026. Data is cheap. The user really doesn't care until they hit your contact form that sucks because you tried to reinvent the wheel instead of just using React. Or when you need to branch out should your site ever do something actually interesting and this problem then gets even worse.
It's not hard anymore to get over the React learning curve. For a content heavy static site just use a good enough LLM and the right starter template and you'll never have to code, SSG and bundle size will just work, lighthouse will be all green. Your users do not care about the tech. The idea that React is the enemy of users sounds like a skill issue on your part. Good thing LLMs exist now, so you don't have to fret about the alleged perverse incentives. For a static site in 2026 a FE dev should be largely irrelevant. What could be more user friendly? Seems like big bad React has redemocratized the web right under your nose.
Data is cheap and fast, CPU time still isn't. I've profiled numerous web sites on slow Android devices and they absolutely crawl when parsing JS and giant JSON blobs required to hydrate a page that's one big React app for no real reason.
> It's not hard anymore to get over the React learning curve.
> The idea that React is the enemy of users sounds like a skill issue on your part.
You're contradicting yourself here. Is React incredibly simply to learn or is optimizing it for speed a "skill issue"? I'm not talking about myself here, I'm talking about the state of the industry. The web is full of slow-as-shit web sites that are held back by JS and JSON parsing. You don't need to convince me they aren't because I've seen it with my own eyes time and time again. As an industry it's become far more important to fart out basic functionality and move on than take any kind of pride in your output. It's sad and I'm not going to apologise for caring.