I think the basic divide is something like "CRUD forms" vs "interactive applications".
I've built basic CRUD forms with ASP.NET MVC. I've built them with Rails. I've built them with React (+ a hundred random libraries). I've also built interactive "apps" in those languages.
Looking back, the amount of "interactivity" that React adds to a CRUD form is NOT worth the added complexity. But! Right now my dayjob is creating an _insanely_ complex app that you could not have done five years ago with Rails (or, like this presentation is about, something like Unpoly).
I think a problem is that React is just more _fun_ to work with than basic server stuff so devs want to work in it. The added complexity is worth it to have more fun. Maybe that's just me, though. I know a lot of people see React as a hammer to hit every nail with, and I was like that for a long time, but I'm starting to come back around to more server-driven use cases for simple sites.
I've been messing with Fresh a lot lately and it's a nice middle ground of defaulting to rendering _most_ stuff on the server, but you can have "islands" of interactivity that get sent to the client as JS. I'm not sure if it will end up gaining traction, but it's pretty nice.
This stands out to me as one of the cases very few JS frameworks have gotten right. Remix, with its "all mutations are just form actions" approach, is the only one that stands out to me as having done it well.
I agree with everything you said up to the part about fresh and deno, where it looks like you’re falling in the same trap of those wanting to use react. You don’t even notice it but this is the problem. Always thinking the next shiny tool will solve the problems.
Rails, Lararavel and similar frameworks are great for crud apps. No need for fresh or demo or svelte or next.js for that.
I don't think that Fresh or Deno will solve any problems that aren't already solved. In fact, there are a lot of very frustrating bits about Fresh that worked a lot nicer in i.e. Rails. I would not use Fresh in production right now; if I were making a generic CRUD app I would probably use something a lot easier and with a bigger community around it.
I've built basic CRUD forms with ASP.NET MVC. I've built them with Rails. I've built them with React (+ a hundred random libraries). I've also built interactive "apps" in those languages.
Looking back, the amount of "interactivity" that React adds to a CRUD form is NOT worth the added complexity. But! Right now my dayjob is creating an _insanely_ complex app that you could not have done five years ago with Rails (or, like this presentation is about, something like Unpoly).
I think a problem is that React is just more _fun_ to work with than basic server stuff so devs want to work in it. The added complexity is worth it to have more fun. Maybe that's just me, though. I know a lot of people see React as a hammer to hit every nail with, and I was like that for a long time, but I'm starting to come back around to more server-driven use cases for simple sites.
I've been messing with Fresh a lot lately and it's a nice middle ground of defaulting to rendering _most_ stuff on the server, but you can have "islands" of interactivity that get sent to the client as JS. I'm not sure if it will end up gaining traction, but it's pretty nice.
https://fresh.deno.dev/