I like React a lot and I sometimes use it for my own projects (e.g. I just finished https://techadequiz.com/)

However, I don't think React does "add some Javascript behavior to my Rails views (or backend framework equivalent)" very well (which is what I think Stimulus is trying to do). I mean you have solid support for React in the Rails ecosystem, but you turn your HTML-rendering responsibilities over to React Javascript functions.

But you get blank page until js kicks in?

I haven't had a problem. In my experience, I can actually get content up more quickly than a traditional CMS-type system.

Gatsby does some intelligent bundling so each page is pretty much self-bundled.

* Root HTML file

* Core, common JS (cached after first load)

* Page specific JS (also cached on subsequent loads)

For me, this is 257 kB uncompressed - with most of that being the Root HTML file (I realized I don't have minification or Gzip on - which takes that down substantially). Not a tiny payload, but the content is all static so the response comes back extremely quickly.

Even at slow 3G speeds, I barely get a flash. The actual page loads just about as quickly as HN.

With modern internet, the load time is nearly instant AND is literally instant on subsequent page loads (since most of the payload is locally cached).

Not if you use Gatsby or NextJS and get server side rendering out of the box

Why backend of web development is narrow down to nodejs server? How about people who use Rust/Python/Ruby/Elixir/PHP?

It's not. If you're building a backend heavy use-case, there are plenty of good options.

Gatsby is geared towards building web pages, not web applications. If you're implementing Gatsby, you're building essentially HTML pages, possibly with some JS functionality.

It's interesting to me to explore this type of application that is interactive web page, but not web applications

Usually, the more interaction, the more likely it's application. The more it's just a page, the more it should be just HTML.