Which Is Better?

• Simpler to get started with
• Easier to deploy new versions because everything is always in sync
• In the case of the data being embedded in the HTML, the performance can result in better UX and SEO

• Easier, and probably cheaper, to scale as traffic grows
• Easier to practice good separation of concerns as the codebase grows
• Can be hosted on separate servers and using separate technologies
• Embedding data in the HTML is still possible with pre-rendering (similar to how Next.js works), it's just more complicated

Perhaps. My recommendation to someone building a new application from scratch would be to start with a monolith, but to keep the API and the front-end decoupled logically within the project from the start (like we're doing with Chirpy).

That way, our app is easy to get started with, but we can migrate to a fully decoupled architecture later if we need to.