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Next.js is infuriating

(blog.meca.sh)
1033 points Bogdanp | 6 comments | 02 Sep 25 06:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source | bottom
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YuukiRey ◴[02 Sep 25 10:04 UTC] 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 ◴[02 Sep 25 11:00 UTC] 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 ◴[02 Sep 25 13:07 UTC] 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. Kye ◴[02 Sep 25 13:45 UTC] No.45103046[source]▶
I haven't heard anything about trends, stereotypes, positives, and negatives regarding IT and development in Africa. Following HN's guideline to increase curiosity as topics get more divisive (as this subthread has), and looking for "the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says" I'm going to assume the best:

What's the story here? I assume this group was chosen for a reason and didn't meet expectations.

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2. a2tech ◴[02 Sep 25 14:07 UTC] No.45103310[source]▶
The non-profit works in Africa and is all about using local resources when at all possible. They knew some people that worked with a group out of Nairobi that talked a good game and they liked the people they met and the non-profit folks are NOT technical, they jumped on it. It's a classic story really--I've been on this side of the table many times before with outsourced work.

If they had brought me in before hand I could have saved them a lot of work by asking the hard questions and reigning in the tech overspend.

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3. arcfour ◴[02 Sep 25 14:13 UTC] No.45103391[source]▶
"We don't know a lot about this, what could go wrong?!" Sigh...
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4. a2tech ◴[02 Sep 25 14:16 UTC] No.45103434{3}[source]▶
They're sweet well meaning people. They're very familiar with the realities of working in Africa, but they always assume people will try and do the right thing at the end of the day.
5. ◴[02 Sep 25 15:14 UTC] No.45104163[source]▶
6. BobaFloutist ◴[02 Sep 25 20:18 UTC] No.45108454{3}[source]▶
"We don't know a lot about this, let's hire some experts to handle it for us"