I believe the pendulum shift back to server-rendering will help many teams...
I believe the pendulum shift back to server-rendering will help many teams write better software. Why? By improving developer communication.
Back in the early 2000's, "everyone" server rendered. We typically didn't split UI and backend. One team built it all. Communication was natural because all the code was colocated. So the developers naturally talked often.
Today, separate UI and backend teams are common. And poor communication between UI and backend teams is a common problem. Bugs and needless complexity frequently occur because backend and UI teams operate in silos and fail to communicate effectively.
For example, I often see the *dedicated* backend for a UI stored in a separate repo from the UI. Why? Code that changes together should be *colocated*.
One obvious solution is unification - Make the UI and backend *one* team.
The shift to server-rendering encourages just that. The same developers often handle both UI and backend calls. This "self-service" model has tradeoffs, but it certainly reduces communication overhead and avoids time-consuming cross-team delays.
So I'm optimistic that the shift back to server rendering UIs will improve team communication.