Next.js 16.4

I've found Vite + React SPA ( Tanstack Router/Query) with a Nodejs/Fast API to work so simply and so easy to reason about. The entire SSR and caching etc. thing adds a lot of mental overhead.

Not to mention this stack can be deployed literally anywhere with great ease.

One of the things I liked about Next is that it presented a “unified platform” instead of the fragmented sea of hacks that is web development. Eg. I was initially taken aback by having to use a special component for images but then it made sense when I realized the platform handles image optimization and stuff like that for me.

But over time I lost the ability to reason about my Next code almost completely. Sometimes it’s the caching, sometimes it’s some little arcane code differences that turn my route into an unexpected type. There is some logic behind it, I can respect that, but I no longer have a coherent mental model of what the framework / the platform does.

It feels like the reality that the abstractions are trying to cover is too wild not to break through at places. Which, I guess, is just web. But it’s a pity, it felt good to have a saner, simpler platform to develop for in older versions of Next.

I still much, much prefer the page router. The caching model is much simpler. Shame that they hired all the open source react maintainers and now nothing other than Tan stack gets developed.

Wishing for the day it stops being the darlings extension framework for SaaS vendors in the MACH ecosystem [0].

At least the whole headless, DXP hype cycle seems to be wanning down, so maybe we get proper SDKs back.

And while we're at it, what about porting Next.js into Next.rs, and remove all that "use nonsense"?

[0] https://macharchitecture.com/

'use cache' works at the function level as well and is very handy to reduce scaling bottlenecks in a pinch.

who even cares at this point, with LLMs you can just build exactly what you want without needing to worry about all the constraints a framework imposes on you. the benefits of frameworks are mute now, and you just end up with the downsides.

Every time next.js ships something new, I remember the cliché xkcd comic of competing standards and smile a little bit.

They have extremely good engineers, but product/feature management can really benefit from some self-reflection :)

Svelte and its kit are a much better dev experience

It’s a shame that the LLMs default to Next when vibe coding instead of something serious like Phoenix. Then again, maybe it’s a good thing - all of the sloppy copies of my saas are complete dumpster fires and only going to slow them down.

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