To this day, even after going through react tutorials, I still feel like it so much more overhead than what is needed compared to using a good templating engine like jinja. I can easily make components and in one file inject css and js that is only used on that component.

Plus, most times the templates are cached. So with very little css/js to load it's really fast. Basically like a static site.

But, data binding. Ok, so there's some is on the page that can change some elements. You can still make an Ajax request to some endpoint to get a json response and update the UI. Even faster with a websocket to subscribe to an endpoint. You still don't need react/Vue for that.

Another upside, is libraries getting out of date. No need to update your react version when a new one comes out. Less headache, no overhead. Sure there will be something if you're using is for Ajax requests, but that's likely an easier upgrade anyways.

I forget any other reason server site template rendering was just easier?

Note 1: My goal here is to have a conversation about this. I am trying to learn better for both sides of the argument.

Note 2: I do want to be fair in saying that I understand the desire for this for a rich interactive application interface that has a lot more moving parts that don't need to communicate with a back end. Such as where you would build an offline application