Next.js is infuriating

Heard and appreciate the feedback. We’re well aware of the DX papercuts in Middleware. With 15.5 we made a big step in supporting Node runtime[1] which addresses a slew of issues people have reported over time.

If I went back in time, I would have called it Routing Middleware or Routing Handler. A specific hook to intercept during the routing phase, which can be delivered to the CDN edge for specialized providers. It’s also a somewhat advanced escape hatch.

Since OP mentions logging, it’s worth noting that for instrumentation and observability we’ve embraced OpenTelemetry and have an instrumentation.ts convention[2]

[1] https://nextjs.org/blog/next-15-5#nodejs-middleware-stable

[2] https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/file-conventions/i...

First off, since the sentiment here is really negative, I'd like to say that next.js is actually really good for what it does. You've done a great job at building the software that powers millions of websites at this point.

I think a big part of the negative sentiment derives from the fact that detailed documentation and reference documentation almost non-existant. The documentation mostly tells you what exists, but not how to use them, how they get executed, common pitfalls and gotchas etc etc.

The documentation is written to be easy and friendly to newcomers, but is really missing the details and nuances of whatever execution context a given api is in and does not touch on derived complexities of using react in a server environment etc.

This is a trend across a lot of projects these days - often missing all the nuances and details - writing good documentation is really hard. Finding the balance between making things user friendly and detailed is hard.

Keep it up

Don't you find it problematic, as a framework that's 8 years old to already have reached version 15.x? Assuming they follow semantic versioning and those are 15 different backwards incompatible upgrades?