A developer switched from a React single-page application to an HTML-first approach with progressive enhancement and doubled user engagement overnight. But when they brought in a replacement contractor, that developer dismissed the simpler approach as "a lot more work."

Let that sink in. Simpler, more performant, more accessible HTML is now considered harder than building a React SPA. That's not a technical assessment—it's a skills gap.

As one commenter on the original post noted: "If you asked junior devs to build a website, they would unthinkingly start a new React project." Not because React is the right tool for the job, but because it's the only tool they know. When your entire education is React tutorials and component libraries, plain HTML does look foreign and difficult.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: 90% of SPAs could be Django or Rails apps with better performance and accessibility. Most websites don't need client-side routing, complex state management, or hydration. They need to render content quickly and work reliably.

The HTML-first approach delivers real benefits. Faster initial page loads. Better SEO. Works without JavaScript. More accessible by default. Less complexity to maintain. For many use cases, these aren't marginal improvements—they're transformative.

But the ecosystem has calcified around React. Component libraries exist for React but not vanilla HTML—that's the real lock-in. Not technical lock-in, but tooling lock-in. If you want a date picker or modal that looks decent, it's dramatically easier to <code>npm install</code> a React component than build one with HTML and vanilla JavaScript.

There's a middle ground emerging: HTMX with Go and SQLite, server-side rendering with minimal JavaScript, progressive enhancement that adds interactivity where needed. These approaches acknowledge that some interactivity is valuable while rejecting the idea that everything needs to be a client-side application.

This isn't anti-React. React is genuinely excellent for building complex, stateful applications like Figma or Google Docs. The problem is treating it as the default for everything. Your blog doesn't need React. Your marketing site doesn't need React. Your documentation doesn't need React.

The most revealing part? The developer who doubled their users by simplifying their stack wasn't doing anything radical. They were just building websites the way we built websites before we convinced ourselves that everything needed to be an "app."

The technology is impressive. The question is whether we've forgotten that simpler solutions often work better.