Next.js is infuriating

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.

> 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.

Things will get far worse before they get better. Right now, online courses such as the ones in PluralSight are pushing Next.js on virtually all courses related to React. I have no idea what ill-advised train of thought resulted in this sad state of affairs but here we are.

The train of thought is “what is everyone using? I’ll use that too”

> The train of thought is “what is everyone using? I’ll use that too”

I'm not so sure about that. We're seeing Next.js being pushed as the successor of create-react-app even in react.dev[1], which as a premise is kind of stupid. There is something wrong definitely going on.

[1] https://react.dev/learn/creating-a-react-app

It was interesting handling frontend interviews recently.

We do a 30-min tops exercise where you create a React project to show how to use useState and useEffect, etc. I help with whatever command they want to use and allow Google/ChatGPT.

More than half of the candidates had no idea how to use React without Next.js, and some argued it was impossible, even after I told them the opposite.

What are you really testing for? That sounds like a bad interview.

Basic react experience presumably. As a first approximation, it seems like every possible interview sounds like a bad interview to someone. What has worked well for you?

Seems more like a test on random React minutiae. Like, let's take some framework, take away some random piece. How well do you know the area around that random piece we just removed? Frameworks are large and gnarly (or there isn't enough to them). Expecting a candidate to be lucky and know random implementation details in the area that happened to be picked doesn't seem like you'd select for anything other than luck.

For me, lately, the interview question is "here's code that ChatGPT generated for (previous interview question as related to the role we're hiring for that we could do)", what's wrong with it? What do now? (ChatGPT may or may not have actually generated the code in question.)

It's not React "minutiae". It's incredibly basic concepts, that if you don't know, you cannot in good faith say you know react.

It's like not knowing how to write a for loop or how to access an object's property in JavaScript.