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Next.js is infuriating

blog.meca.sh

531–540 of 602 posts

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#531

I 100% agree. I've ran into the same issues, and I would never use Next.js for anything, and I will encourage every team at work to use something else. In general Next.js has so many layers of abstraction that 99.9999% of projects don't need. And the ones that do are probably better off building a bespoke solution from lower level parts. Next.js is easily the worst technology I've ever used.

The most frustrating thing about Next.js is that it tries to be a really cool Rails/Wordpress/Meteor-like full-stack everything-and-the-kitchen-sink framework, but you quickly realize that all the opinions you delegate for it to make are, like, the most boring possible things it could choose to take opinions on (e.g. its opinions about middleware, image resizing, SSR-everywhere, etc) while the actually productive opinions it could take it leaves to you (database, ORM, communication protocols). Its not remotely in the same realm as Rails/Wordpress/Meteor.

Framework-defined infrastructure is a seriously cool and interesting idea, but nowadays Next feels more like an Infrastructure-defined framework; the Vercel platform's architecture and design are why things in Next are the way they are. It was supposed to be "Vercel adapts to Next", but instead we got four different kinds of subtly different function runtimes. My usage dashboard says my two most-used things are "Fluid Active CPU" and "ISR Writes". I just pay them $20/mo and pray none of those usages go over 100% because I wouldn't have the first clue why I'm going over if it does.

Half the labels on there are Star Trek technobabel, which I would take the effort of learning, except I'm convinced they're all going to change with the next major release anyway. Partly because, I keep hoping & praying they will. I know a concerning number of former die-hard Zeit fans who've taken their projects and customers elsewhere. At the end of the day, if they were to ask me what they need to address in the next major release, I seriously do not know how to answer that question beside "practically every major and minor decision y'all have made since and including the App Router was the wrong one". How do you recover from that? Idk.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#532
post #43

React server components and server side rendering should never have been in react but instead should have lived its life as a separate project.

Absolutely! But that is not the first time React changes its core. For me, it is dead now.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one thinking this. I built a medium-complexity, money-making, production-grade app in Next.js and started out on Vercel's hosting (and Google Firebase) and then moved to hosting myself and stripping out Firebase, replacing it with Pocketbase. Pocketbase was the ONLY good thing about this journey. Everything else sucked just so terribly. Infinite complexity everywhere, breaking changes CON…

" Codebases from years ago are still rock-solid." This is the biggest thing for me. I recently pulled down an 8 year old hobby Java/Maven project I had and it compiled and ran perfectly on the first try. Imagine trying to get an 8 year old javascript project to work...

You mean like this?

nvm use && npm i && npm run dev

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#534

I 100% agree. I've ran into the same issues, and I would never use Next.js for anything, and I will encourage every team at work to use something else. In general Next.js has so many layers of abstraction that 99.9999% of projects don't need. And the ones that do are probably better off building a bespoke solution from lower level parts. Next.js is easily the worst technology I've ever used.

My experience with Next.js are that its rough edges are a feature, not a bug. Everything is geared towards you giving up and just using Vercel's hosting

[dead]

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blazor is not good at anything. Please stick with JS for the frontend .NET devs. You'll thank me later.

What issues have you encountered? As old school as it may be, I can accomplish basically everything my users need with just vanilla JS and .fetch() requests. I've been playing with Blazor, and it's been great so far. However, like everything, I know it's not perfect.

Performance of WASM issues. Rendering performance of large data grids is not good. Also the first load time is also terrible 50mb+ payloads.

Blazor server uses websockets and is just a whole other bag of hurt. You'll have to deal with disconnects even if you can stomache the increased cloud costs.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might have? The official React docs recommend Next. That capture happened... two years ago? (Perhaps there's a good blog post there, if it doesn't exist already)

Hi! I maintain Redux and am deeply involved in the React community, and have spent a lot of time both critiquing the React team's decisions and explaining their decisions to the community. I actually wrote exactly that blog post and did a conf talk on it earlier this year. I covered why the React team switched to directing users to use "frameworks" to build React apps, the development influences behind React Server C…

Thank you for the writeups. I learned a lot reading those.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#538
> This is what real engineering looks like. SvelteKit is a Vercel product. How is the flagship offering worse than what is essentially a side project. What the hell?

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

A big project becomes design by committee. If the initial kernel was sound, it can go on for quite some time. If it wasn't, it takes herculean effort to turn such a boat. And you will likely never be thanked for it.

Starting a new project to show people how it's done works as well or better than any amount of cajoling or badgering. But you still may not be thanked for it.

Re: Next.js is infuriating

#540

I 100% agree. I've ran into the same issues, and I would never use Next.js for anything, and I will encourage every team at work to use something else. In general Next.js has so many layers of abstraction that 99.9999% of projects don't need. And the ones that do are probably better off building a bespoke solution from lower level parts. Next.js is easily the worst technology I've ever used.

Second worst for me. I’ve used Sharepoint.

Some people get my hatred for Teams, and some people don't. Most of the ones who do had to use Sharepoint at some point, and can see its pointy little horns sticking out of Teams.
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