If not SPAs, What?

The article groups current alternatives to SPA development into four directions: opinionated full-stack JavaScript frameworks, Turbolinks-style partial page loading, server-side-state frameworks, and small progressive-enhancement libraries. It presents them as different attempts to reduce client-side complexity without returning to the old API-first frontend model.

Reading notes

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• Opinionated full-stack JavaScript frameworks such as Remix, RedwoodJS, and Blitz.js try to reconnect routes and data loading, reduce client-side fetching by default, and make status codes and caching more explicit.
• Next.js is described as close to that category, but still largely unopinionated about the data layer, so many sites using it still rely on a separate API stack.
• The article notes that these projects are backed by companies or foundations, which may help avoid burnout and abandonment in open source projects.
• Turbolinks is presented as a small layer on top of server-rendered apps that replaces full page reloads with AJAX-driven partial updates and smoother navigation.
• Its appeal is the ratio of user-experience gain to added complexity: it changes very little while removing the visual blink of full transitions.
• Server-side-state frameworks like Laravel Livewire, Stimulus Reflex, and Phoenix LiveView shift more interaction logic to the server and aim to let developers write little or no JavaScript.
• These tools rely heavily on WebSockets or close server-client coupling and apply server-computed UI changes on the client side.
• The article frames them as the opposite of the “frontend plus agnostic API layer” pattern because they accept mutable server state instead of avoiding it.
• Modest progressive-enhancement tools such as Stimulus, Alpine, htmlx, and some Web Components are described as small additions for existing pages.
• Their limitation is that they assume knowledge of JavaScript and the DOM, which many developers may no longer have in depth.