Or look at https://www.phoenixframework.org/ to see what a web framework would look like if real-time updates mattered. (That said I do find that simple IoT applications like a volume knob for my smart speakers in party mode or that can toggle my lights do work well with websockets + mobx + React.)

As for DX, I think waiting for "npm run start" to get out it's own way is a large enough decrement that I don't have to get into all the many problems w/ JS build systems.

I will grant that React is nice for an animation-heavy UI and I play video games enough that I appreciate such things. Another thing I like about React vs similar competitors is that the rendering model is flexible enough to enable things like react-three-fibers which is another reason for me not to invest in Vue, Svelte and things like that.

As for user experience isn't it the dark truth that Google and Facebook want "as many UI redraws as possible?" Let's face it, the honest clickthrough rate on ads is indistinguishable from zero but when you visit some site like anandtech it is by no means accidental that the layout rerenders endlessly because each rerender is a chance that a click on a link is transmogrified into a click on an ad. It's covert click fraud and is a large enough decrement and between that and the endless staring at spinners and waiting things to load any possible increment in user experience is at best hypothetical.

(e.g. in another window I have a completely SSRed app that uses HTMX. It uses zero spinners, runs as fast or faster than a desktop app, and never has the UI move around mindlessly. I grant it would be cool if it had some more animation but would I trade that for rock solid responsiveness?)

And yes, Phoenix is a very interesting thing, but it's most likely only viable because of it being Erlang under the hood (needs a process running for each client, hence ultra cheap Erlang processes being a good fit).

> when you visit some site like anandtech it is by no means accidental that the layout rerenders endlessly because each rerender is a chance that a click on a link is transmogrified into a click on an ad

I think you went a bit too far into the conspiracy theory there. An element for which the height is not defined (via HTML or CSS) gets rendered usually to 1x1 pixel, which forces a redraw if the element turns out later to have width and height (like an image that takes half of a second to download). Which, IMO, means web developers are not bothering to put sizes in delayed-loading elements, which points a bit more to the incompetence side than the malice side. But ads probably not specifying width and height would also indicate significant malice, can't rule that out.