Why would anyone use a react app to create a static site is beyond me. I kind of get the “why” - componentizing everything + the creators were react experts but the level of overengineering and brittleness still blow my mind.
"Static" here doesn't mean "UI doesn't change", it means "files served don't change". You build and ship static HTML for initial load, plus client-side React code that takes over from there. The awesome thing about these frameworks is that you don't have to write a separate templating language for the static HTML, and then keep it in sync with the client-side React. You write everything with the same React code, and the decision of when to render which parts becomes a totally independent decision. In my experience this is a really productive workflow
Does static here mean the content served by the server doesn’t change, or that the content delivered by the server contains no dynamic JavaScript behavior.
The former. No processing is required by the server. It just sends the HTML/images/JS/resources over the line, so the site could be served from anywhere or any CDN.
The client side can be as dynamic as you’d like, but the main server can be dumb. For dynamic data sources (product search, etc), you’d have to call a remote API from the client.
If this is the case, then doesn't it make sense to use react for dynamic parts? If you are using react for the dynamic parts then why not use it for the static parts as well?
I haven't looked at Gatsby for a few years, but I always felt it was too complicated for a static site generator.
And it required you to learn/use GraphQL, which isn't bad per-se, but GraphQL also hasn't achieved the mindshare that might have seemed likely when Gatsby was born. That, as much as anything, might be a cause of their adoption issues.
With NextJS and Astro covering my needs, I haven't given Gatsby a thought in a while.
