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Next.js is infuriating

(blog.meca.sh)
1033 points Bogdanp | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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YuukiRey ◴[] No.45101009[source]
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.

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jbreckmckye ◴[] No.45101378[source]
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
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a2tech ◴[] No.45102624[source]
Working with a client just last month that hired an African engineering group to build a tool for them. What they got delivered was a Next.js train wreck that was so coupled to Vercel's hosting that I couldn't make it run successfully anywhere else. The customer was a non-profit and didn't want to/couldn't afford Vercel's hosting so asked if I could try and make it run and I (naively) thought 'its just javascript, it should run anywhere!' and I took a run at it.

After a week of futzing with it I just threw up my hands and said 'no can do'. I couldn't untangle the spaghetti JS and piles of libraries. 'Compiling' would complete and if you looked at the output it was clearly missing tons of bits but never threw an error. Just tons of weirdness from the toolchain to the deployment platform.

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1. snickerdoodle12 ◴[] No.45102900[source]
Why accept the result? Send it back and have them deliver something usable.
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2. a2tech ◴[] No.45103100[source]
It was running when they accepted it. However they didn't realize that the group was running the Django/Postgres 'backend' on a managed Digital Ocean instance, then there were two different Vercel 'projects'. It was costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month to run for a project that was VERY lightly used.

They paid them on the strength of seeing it working, but then the consulting group basically ghosted when the customer asked to adjust it to run on cheaper hosting (probably because they couldn't), then the site got shut off because the hosting was all in the consulting groups name and they stopped paying it. Digital Ocean nuked the database for non-payment and they lost tons and tons of manual work putting in data.

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3. snickerdoodle12 ◴[] No.45103175[source]
Damn, what a horror story
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4. a2tech ◴[] No.45103367{3}[source]
I felt really bad for them. They're super nice people and I don't think the contractors set out to take advantage of them, it ended up being an bad experience for everyone.