The thing is time to render and interactivity is much more reliant on the database queries and the internet connection of the user than anything else. Now instead of a spinner or a progress bar in the toolbar of the browser, now I got skeleton loaders and use half of GB for one tab.
Not to defend the practice, I’ve never partaken, but I think there’s some legit timing arguments that a server renderer can integrate more requests faster thanks to being collocated with services and dbs.
which brings me back to my main point of the web 1.0 architecture. Serving pages from the server-side, where the data lives, and we've come full circle.
