What I'm wondering is what the anti-React folks are recommending for generating HTML and/or DOM itself in the docs use case, since most of it needs to be dynamically generated from OpenAPI definitions.
Which templating technology would you recommend for the use case instead? Keep in mind that generating HTML from OpenAPI specs can become complex and will require plenty of maps, filters, recursion and indexing into the data in the course of transforming it into HTML.
Are there a lot of server side template languages that can’t do this?
This is straight-forward stuff.
Did I say there weren't a lot of template languages that can do this?
A dead give-away that this subject isn't as "straight-forward" as you think is that, at one sentence in, you've already misidentified the conversation taking place. This isn't about can vs can't, but about the right tool for the job.
What template language would you personally recommend for this project?
How would you approach SSG with Classic ASP?
"The web is too complex! All these web frameworks are too complicated!"
"Okay, what do you suggest instead?"
"I'd just use [completely unmaintainable technology from the 90s that is no longer supported by its vendor]"
"Okay, how would you approach [basic feature of the web framework]?"
"Stop moving the goalposts!"
Come on, you could at least come up with some hand-waving about cache headers and CDNs.
Granted the pages probably wont look as good as what they have here or be integrated in their larger docs, but yea its possible.
But if you are going to build your own docs generator, React and Next with RSC aren't a bad choice. Web development just isn't as simplistic as people on HN seem to think it is.
> React and Next with RSC aren't a bad choice. Web development just isn't as simplistic as people on HN seem to think it is.
Yes it fucking is. I've been doing it for 15+ years and most of the complexity added since about 10 years ago is not required. Many times they're actually regressions.
The web is complex because we made it so.
This is a perfect example where they could write their own docs generator with MUCH less complexity. You read a damn json/yaml file and make HTML out of it. Style it with CSS and you're finished. It's as maintainable as it gets.
Now let's look at running `yarn install` in this project a year from now and see how easy it's going to be to maintain it.
Odds are NextJS will be 5 versions behind and with 500 vulnerabilities found in the dependency graph.