Personally I stick with Node (Express if it's a web server). Next.JS is cool but it's a bit too magical for my tastes, at least when hackability is the key prio

Personally I stick with Node (Express if it's a web server). Next.JS is cool but it's a bit too magical for my tastes, at least when hackability is the key priority. Usually I end up adding TypeScript into the mix, even for prototypes. However, I'm pretty comfy with the configuration side of that (webpack, etc) so it isn't a huge time sink. If it is going to be a huge time sink, you might try Deno instead. It has Express-like libraries of its own.