I'd say this is astutely correct. DEV, for example, does compile and serve a lot of pages as static, so for the end user it shouldn't make a big difference whether our site was "statically compiled" or "built by a server and database but cached via a CDN".
I think a lot of it comes down more to the developer experience and reliability of the whole application. There are tradeoffs in terms of what could go wrong and why for each approach, a different set of tools for different styles, etc.
The constraint of static frontends, in the JAMstack universe offers inherent guidance as to how to build a complex application, where typically the shell of the app is shipped and the data comes next. This imitates installable applications in a way that some developers might find helpful for their process.
Hope this helps, if anybody thinks I'm off base with any of this, feel free to weigh in.
I'd say this is astutely correct. DEV, for example, does compile and serve a lot of pages as static, so for the end user it shouldn't make a big difference whether our site was "statically compiled" or "built by a server and database but cached via a CDN".
I think a lot of it comes down more to the developer experience and reliability of the whole application. There are tradeoffs in terms of what could go wrong and why for each approach, a different set of tools for different styles, etc.
The constraint of static frontends, in the JAMstack universe offers inherent guidance as to how to build a complex application, where typically the shell of the app is shipped and the data comes next. This imitates installable applications in a way that some developers might find helpful for their process.
Hope this helps, if anybody thinks I'm off base with any of this, feel free to weigh in.
I think the DEV approach is what ZEIT called Serverless Pre-Rendering, without the
less.