Post

i'm writing "RSC for _ Developers" where _ is your favorite framework / language / whatever. what "_" do you want to see represented?

Developers that just wanna build a SPA webapp with no care about SEO.

I feel like MOST of the iceberg of React apps are authenticated B2B SaaS “web apps” that just wanna load JSON on route change. Those of us building those feel abandoned by the RSC movement.

You can still build this with RSC! The original demo of RSCs was a SPA with no SSR that just fetched JSON from an endpoint. The difference is that the JSON was the RSC payload, with jsx and client bundles with the data inserted, instead of only the data.

For non-JavaScript backends this means adding (yet) another server or rewriting the backend right?

yes

If your customers care about performance you’ll need a web server for the front end that calls the back end APIs anyway, so I don’t see it as an extra server

i think that’s what we need a stronger case for. BFF-pill people first

Yeah agreed, tbh I thought this was already well understood and the blocker was FE devs don’t have expertise building backends, so it was obvious RSCs were bridging that gap

"your SPA deserves a BFF"

Had it for 10 years. Still waiting for a way to start using RSC.

what’s it written in?

The BFF? Node. React + Webpack on the client.

i don't think we'll see a supported plug-and-play solution for Webpack. there is one already for Parcel, and will likely be one for Vite in longer term. you could also try Next to play with it

I’ve played with it Next for sure, but Next not an option for us. Just don’t get this impression that devs “don’t get it” from the react team. There aren’t a lot of ways to adopt it outside Next. Support in Vite + React Router will help.

more specifically: AFAIK the only real option atm is "use Next App Router". which implies migration if not using Next (and part of the reason why there's the "doesn't work with SPAs" assumption, yadayada). would love to see React core docs on how to adopt, how to migrate, tool options, etc.

Dan's posts are wonderful, and I think the core docs should have some form of that info to explain mental model. but having concrete info on options outside of Next (if any), ways to use with an "SPA" / Webpack / Vite / RRv7, etc, would answer a lot of questions and concern about adoption.

I've seen Ricky mention "original demo was Webpack + SPA" a few times. acknowledged. but generally my own mindset is "if the info isn't live in docs or a blog post it's buried enough to not meaningfully exist". especially given we're a few years on from that demo.