I agree that it does feel overly complex, and generally speaking I loathe complexity, but Next.js does do a lot for you in exchange for that complexity. If you

I agree that it does feel overly complex, and generally speaking I loathe complexity, but Next.js does do a lot for you in exchange for that complexity. If you don't want/need the fancy client-side/SSR/SSG abilities to really optimize your app, then some of the hoops feel unnecessary, but if you really want that sweet edge, it's fantastic. That said, I rarely choose Next.js nowadays because even though it enables some real incredible performance/optimization, Phoenix (Elixir) is still great and uses a much simpler (IMHO) model. That could just be because I'm used to that model though from many, many years of Rails and MVC patterns in GUIs before that.