The Case for building Client-First web apps (2020)

> As Javascript was maturing, a conventional wisdom has developed among most Web developers, that you should render the HTML on the client side, and then progressively enhance it with Javascript.

Progressive enhancement implied rendering on the server so sites would still work with JS disabled. There is nothing being "progressively" enhanced if render only happens in the client.

> As Javascript was maturing, a conventional wisdom has developed among most Web developers, that you should render the HTML on the client side, and then progressively enhance it with Javascript. This was considered best practice and recommended by pretty much every authority from 2009 to 2018.

This isn’t true. Not only that, the link used to try make the above incorrect point actually says the opposite:

> So when you build your next website with next-generation JavaScript / CSS frameworks which work only in the most favorable environment for your code and it breaks when it does not get it…. this is not a Progressive Enhancement strategy.

On backend side, client-first is a must, because we should always make backend headless api to be consumed by JS client.

On public side, client-first is a nice-to-have, not just because of SEO, but optimize user experience.

(2020)