You’re only looking at the outputs or end result and from that perspective React is just going to put out what is very similar to the “DHTML” stuff back then. At the end of the day everything is still just pushing HTML to browsers.
What React introduces is functional composition to application design (if you do it right at least), and the main benefit of this is in maintainability, scalability, and reusability. For most simple apps this benefit can be completely moot, which is why some can feel the setup or learning of a new paradigm for seemingly no benefit can be a regression.
In fact if you wanted to use React in the same way that PHP was used a decade ago, you still can, and it isn’t any more difficult to do so. You just end up with much less maintainable code. You can render React server side just like PHP, and either mount dynamic client side interactive components purely on the client side just like the “good old days,” or you can also render them server side and take advantage of client side hydration at the component level (like the previous method but you also get an initial server render). While this sounds complex, it really is just about as complex as making a server rendered PHP with some interactive JS bits, but just adding some new words to describe the process.
The goal of new React features like server components is to bring the maintainability of functional composition and get this optimization for free while still being able to define your UI in terms of reusable functions.
What React introduces is functional composition to application design (if you do it right at least), and the main benefit of this is in maintainability, scalability, and reusability. For most simple apps this benefit can be completely moot, which is why some can feel the setup or learning of a new paradigm for seemingly no benefit can be a regression.
In fact if you wanted to use React in the same way that PHP was used a decade ago, you still can, and it isn’t any more difficult to do so. You just end up with much less maintainable code. You can render React server side just like PHP, and either mount dynamic client side interactive components purely on the client side just like the “good old days,” or you can also render them server side and take advantage of client side hydration at the component level (like the previous method but you also get an initial server render). While this sounds complex, it really is just about as complex as making a server rendered PHP with some interactive JS bits, but just adding some new words to describe the process.
The goal of new React features like server components is to bring the maintainability of functional composition and get this optimization for free while still being able to define your UI in terms of reusable functions.