Next.js is infuriating

Half these issues stem from a relative misunderstanding of exactly where the code is running. Next.js has layers upon layers upon layers due to the interplay between the browser, middleware, edge vs. node, SSR... It's an enormous amount of complexity and it really only fits under the following set of circumstances:

  * You sell a B2C product to a potentially global audience, so edge semantics actually help with latency issues
  * You're willing to pay Vercel a high premium for them to host
  * You have no need for background task processing (Vercel directs you to marketplace/partner services), so your architecture never pushes you to host on another provider.

Otherwise, just tread the well-trod path and stick to either a react-vite SPA or something like Rails doing ordinary SSR.

> Half these issues stem from a relative misunderstanding of exactly where the code is running.

I used to think Javascript everywhere was an advantage, and this is exactly why I now think it's a bad idea.

My company uses Inertia.js + Vue and it a significantly better experience. I still get all the power of modern frontend rendering but the overall architecture is so much simpler. The routing is 100% serverside and there's no need for a general API. (Note: Inertia works with React and Svelte too)

We tried Nuxt at first, but it was a shit show. You end up having _two_ servers instead of one: the actual backend server, and the server for your frontend. There was so much more complexity because we needed to figure out a bunch of craziness about where the code was actually being run.

Now it's dead simple. If it's PHP it's on the server. It's JS it's in the browser. Never needing to question that has been a huge boon for us.

I am a backend dev, and I needed a website that was temporary for an event. I thought to myself this would be a good opportunity to learn some frontend development.

After looking through the 20 different popular front end frameworks and getting confused by SSR, CSR, etc. I decided to use Nuxt. I thought oh this is great, Vue makes a lot of sense to me and this seems like it makes it easer to make Vue apps. I could not have been more wrong. I integrated it with Supabase + Vercel and I had so many random issues I almost scrapped the entire thing to just build it with squarespace.