i'm in love with astro

i've challenged myself to try learning something new, and this time around i'm learning astro. however, i don't have a current project to build with it so i'm learning first by reading the documentation thoroughly. and... i gotta, i'm already in love. here's a bit about what i'm reading that has be convinced.

Server-first: Websites run faster when they render HTML on the server.

this is a truth that many a React dev doesn't seem to remember. i primarily work with React for my job and so i keep up with the current trends. one thing that i've still not understood is why javascript/react is a good choice for rendering on the server. i'm not convinced it is, and i truly think that many orgs would be better off if the responsibility of rendering on the server was in the hands of a more-capable framework.

Astro is only a successful project if people love using it

stemming from when i used to maintain an open-source library, i believe that developer experience is something that many frameworks don't focus on enough. right now the react ecosystem feels like a ride i don't want to be on, and a large part of that is because of my own dissatisfaction with react's features that don't give me the promised benefits (suspense, compiler, hydration/ssr)... at least not without significant investment. i wish react was easier to "get right."

An island always runs in isolation from other islands on the page, and multiple islands can exist on a page. ... Because they are independent, you can even mix several frameworks on each page.

i used to use and maintain single-spa, a microfrontends library that helped people accomplish an architecture which is a composition of smaller SPAs, while Astro takes a Multi Page App approach. while it doesn't share the same focus on ssr, single-spa pioneered an approach with a concept of a root config (could also be called an App Shell) which, to borrow Astro terms, basically server-renders an island placeholder for each microfrontend to know where and when it should mount on the page. this allowed us to make client islands out of individual SPAs, each being independently developed and deployed. i feel like Astro is a continuation and maturation of this concept - which makes this also feel familiar.