> Guillermo Rauch tweeted a few months back that SPAs were a zero interest-rate phenomenon
Guillermo Rauch is selling Vercel, whose strategy includes first-class tooling for SSR, convincing people to move their SPA to SSR, and then locking them in on their platform.
Except my preference for SSR as the default dates as far back as 2014 and is rooted in the laws of physics[1] Downloading an empty shell, downloading code to render a bunch of spinners, to then incur in a bunch of waterfalls of data and more code to the server is not gonna make it.
I mean those are fair points, though respectfully I think there are cases for SPAs where SSR won't do. But that's not what we're talking about.
Referring to SPAs as a "zero-interest-rate phenomenon" implies that SSG/SSR models are more efficient in terms of financial cost of deployment. I don't agree this is necessarily the case, and I think SPAs can be developed and deployed sanely and cheaply also.
Vercel is doing some amazing things, but it's also innovating in ways that occasionally lead to "lock-in", in the sense that moving away from Vercel would involve a lot of friction. So I think it's fair to point out that you have a financial interest in convincing people to adopt delivery models that your business streamlines.
Guillermo Rauch is selling Vercel, whose strategy includes first-class tooling for SSR, convincing people to move their SPA to SSR, and then locking them in on their platform.