We’ve reached a point where we ship 5MB of JavaScript just to render a static blog post. We’ve traded the simplicity of the request-response cycle for the complexity of ‘State Management’ and ‘Hydration.’ For my stack, I decided to go back to the source: SSR (Server-Side Rendering).”

I realized that for 90% of the web, the browser shouldn’t be a heavy application engine; it should be a document viewer. By rendering HTML on the server—using my Java backend and simple templates—I eliminated the ‘Loading…’ spinner culture.

Instead of a complex React component tree, I use minimal, purposeful JavaScript only where interactivity is required. The result is a ‘Lighthouse 100’ score by default, not by effort.

We’ve reached a point where we ship 5MB of JavaScript just to render a static blog post. We’ve traded the simplicity of the request-response cycle for the complexity of ‘State Management’ and ‘Hydration.’ For my stack, I decided to go back to the source: SSR (Server-Side Rendering).”

The Synthesis “I realized that for 90% of the web, the browser shouldn’t be a heavy application engine; it should be a document viewer. By rendering HTML on the server—using my Java backend and simple templates—I eliminated the ‘Loading…’ spinner culture.

Instead of a complex React component tree, I use minimal, purposeful JavaScript only where interactivity is required. The result is a ‘Lighthouse 100’ score by default, not by effort.