5 ms·

Vercel being involved is a huge red flag. NextJS is a pile of garbage, and their platform is absurdly expensive and leans heavily on vendor lock in.

iamsaitam 1y ago
Why is NextJS a pile of garbage?
- tacker2000 1y ago
  It’s VC funded, overengineered crap, specifically designed to push people into using their overpriced hosting. I hope this isnt the way that React as a whole will go in the end. But fortunately there are enough alternatives about.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  - fragile under load and very difficult to debug SSR issues - inconsistent behavior between hosted and self hosted versions of the same code - horrible build times, like laughably bad multi-minute builds for trivial code bases - crappy directory based routing system with lots of weird gotchas - schizo identity JAMstack -> serverless -> ssr -> now its microvms + ai - multiple hilariously long running GH issues where the dev team is thrashing around trying to debug their own black box framework - "framework" that barely provides any of the primitives necessary to build web apps - major breaking changes around core features like routing that require painful migrations - general sloppiness, churn, and insecurity that comes from being part of the nodejs ecosystem Thats not even getting into all of the shady patterns vercel uses to lock you into their overpriced hosting. I've been a part of multiple teams that decided to build apps using NextJS, and while the FE is not my responsibility I typically got pulled in to help troubleshoot random issues. It was a complete waste of time in almost every case, and in one case resulted in the entire FE team being let go because they were unable to ship anything on time.
  - molszanski 1y ago
    Try Astro my friend. React SSR with none of that next bs
    - throw-10-8 1y ago
      I've heard good things, what would you say is the killer reasons to justify being the nodejs ecosystem vs something more purpose built for ssr like php?
      - molszanski 1y ago
        As easy as php for simple stuff. And can do complex SPA stuff.
    - WA 1y ago
      You lost me at React SSR. That is part of the complexity bs. React is a lib for mapping state to the DOM. There's no DOM on the server. So React on the server is 95% useless for that purpose and hence, overengineered to create a bit of HTML and send it down the wire. I like the simplicity of Hono and use their html helper to write good old HTML that is send to the client.
      - throw-10-8 1y ago
        This is the vercelization of react peeking through, that people even associate react with ssr is an anti-pattern.
      - deepriverfish 1y ago
        how do you manage the application state with Hono? I saw their home page and it didn't mention anything about it.
        WA 1y ago
        Hono is a server-side framework like Express. So same way like you handle application state in most server-side multi-page web apps: You just fetch whatever you need from the DB per request. "State management" really isn't that much of an issue on the server. Only on clients, when you need to map state changes to DOM updates.
- throwaway77385 1y ago
  If there is only one thing you take from my post, then look up "NextJS middleware auth bypass" or something along those lines. Have fun reading about that and then never touch NextJS or anything Vercel ever again. I won't repeat what the sibling poster said, but I can tell you, I've been using NextJS from v12-v15 and in that time we've had: - The catastrophic (and, at the time, UNDOCUMENTED) "aggressive, opt-out caching of all fetch calls", which confused the living daylights out of everyone who suddenly couldn't retrieve updated data from their servers. Like, don't override a native JS function that's supposed to work in an expected way, with black-box magic that adds caching behaviour that then needs to be overriden _per route_ with directives on each route. Cache headers can be added to fetch calls and are easy to configure globally via axios if needed. If you're going to do black magic, call it "nextfetch" or something - The app router / page router transition was shockingly badly handled, with so much missing documentation around dynamic routes - I don't know how many different ways of fetching / setting metadata / <head>-related techniques I've had to learn by now. It seems to change all the time. BUT, that isn't the worst part....the worst part was / is: - You couldn't, for the longest time, fetch metadata for a page without duplicating fetch requests. I think this is where their fetch-deduping thing came from. But again, black-box magic on a native JS function with very inconsistent behaviour, so for a while, all pages in our app just had to make two fetch calls per page that needed specific metadata added to the <head> - Vercel as a platform not allowing to set billing limits (have fun with your DDoS that they don't recognise as such) - Middleware is one file. That's what you get. No chaining, nothing. One god-function for everything. Just think about the anti-pattern that is - I don't know whether it's clever or terrible, but if you want to add a sitemap, you do so by defining a route by creating a folder called sitemap.xml (yes, a directory), where you then put your route.ts which is in keeping with the way the new router should work. But somehow it just doesn't sit right with me. Folders with file extensions. But it also adds a lot of ability to make the sitemap highly customisable and dynamic, so maybe it's ok - You suddenly needed to start awaiting url params, cookies, etc. which is sort of fine, but was a huge change causing warnings all over the compiler for months and months Anyway, those are just a few things off the top off my head. I already find React to be quite counter-intuitive and non-deterministic, but NextJS just adds a layer of pain on top with very, very few advantages. I am dying to get my hands on an alternative, but also don't want to rebuild all of the apps I built when I was still optimistic about NextJS.
azangru 1y ago
Vercel employs maybe half [correction, maybe a quarter] of the React core team. For example, at the keynote at React Conf 2025, it was mentioned that Andrew Clark, who, if I am not mistaken, is employed by Vercel, worked on resolving the rendering issue of React that was blocking the release of React 19 after it was discovered in the release candidate. Vercel and Next.js have been the main testing ground during the development of React server components as well. How much has Vercel contributed to the development of react over the past years?
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components, which has also led to an explosion of complexity in react and has made it less useful as a composable library imo. The last truly useful react feature for me was error boundaries in React 16 (2017?) and I think hooks was react 16 too? These days if I need ui components for an existing SSR app I just use web components or lightweight libs like mithril.
  - JSR_FDED 1y ago
    Mithril rocks. I’ve been blissfully ignoring the new hotness for years.
  - brazukadev 1y ago
    > Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components, which has also led to an explosion of complexity It also alienated a huge part of the userbase that decided to move away from React.
  - robertoandred 1y ago
    How is lowering bundle size not a useful feature? Being able to render something once at build time instead of shipping it to users is great.
crummy 1y ago
I know Vercel has their fingers in a bunch of pies, but is there any significant vendor locking? I worked at a place where we just put nextJS in a docker container and hosted it ourselves, but maybe we would have got more on Vercel?
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  running nextjs in docker is notoriously bug prone, there are multiple GH issues about this with no real resolution the official recommendation we got was to just run it on vercel I would go as far to say that nextjs is not self-hostable in its current state if you expect high traffic and low latency.
  - nicce 1y ago
    They have neglected many issues which would help on self-hosting until the public cry was big enough.
- cryptonym 1y ago
  Try to scale Next.js globally. Try to keep up to date with new versions, changes in paradigms and the way the output is rendered. It's designed to be deployed on Vercel. Production-ready hosting part of the Framework is not Open Source nor well documented. https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/59167 https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/59167 https://www.netlify.com/blog/how-we-run-nextjs/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/how-we-run-nextjs/
- maelito 1y ago
  I migrated https://cartes.app https://cartes.app from Vercel to Dokploy, everything is good and simpler.
mohsen1 1y ago
Also their CEO's picture with Bibi is showing their values
- tipiirai 1y ago
  Whoah. Wasn't aware that Guillermo Rauch openly embraces Benjamin Netanyahu
  - throw-10-8 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - igleria 1y ago
    The people with money don't care, as the very next day Vercel got a series F. That is funny tho because I remember him being pretty anti-israel back in our High school on the long defunct semi-official foropelle.com.ar he owned and managed. He is a programming prodigy, and that's it. Not a nice person. Nevertheless, my anecdote should only be taken with a grain of salt... After all, the only person that probably has backups of foropelle is Rauch himself. And who cares what a teenager had to say back in 2006?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - d13z 1y ago
      Maybe is not that they don't care about it. Maybe it was a REQUISITE to get that founding round.
  - hshdhdhehd 1y ago
    Just looked it up https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-vercel-call-boycott-after-ceo-posts-selfie-netanyahu https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-verce...
- danielxt 1y ago
  [flagged]
rk06 1y ago
that is your opinion, and is irrelevant to the choice. practically, vercel is a company which is heavily invested in react and react's future, so, they need to be present. moreover, this entire initiative looks like a way to reduce vercel's influence, so if you want to be mad, then be mad in 5 yrs, not now.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  It is also my opinion that 5 years from now Vercel will be out of business and their customers will have moved on the next hype driven VC cash laundry.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  Like Microsoft was invested in Web standards in the ie6 days... for their own interests. To own it.
  - peterspath 1y ago
    Like chrome is doing nowadays
- noodletheworld 1y ago
  > vercel is a company which is heavily invested in …people paying for react. Which is fair, but do we have bend knee and suggest they have the best interests of the react ecosystem at heart? They don’t. They are invested in: people using next.js and hosting it on vercel. If that’s not what you’re doing, their interests probably don’t align with yours.
weego 1y ago
It's just a tool. Are the people that run Makita terrible? Who knows, I just use their tools to fix cars. I use tools to build apps for businesses that pay me. There is far too much ideology based decision making in tech. Just build stuff with it or not. Far too many smart people are putting their energies into such discussions that add a lot of drag to the process of society and humanity moving forward for no net gain at all.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  I don't use nextjs because it's a steaming pile of unmaintainable black-box shit. The CEO's politics are just icing on the cake.
- kode95 1y ago
  As someone who isn't too familiar with Next and Vercel (having primarily used Nuxt, the Vue equivalent), it's helpful for me to know what's going on in the React world. Discussions like the above are actually helpful in terms of helping people choose between the various frameworks and hosts.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  Oracle is just a tool. WordPress is just a tool. But you may care about their involvement in something you use.
SilverSlash 1y ago
What's a red flag is that there are 3 new accounts commenting on this reply and all are in agreement supporting your view. Edit: apparently there's some confusion about my comment. I neither use, like, or support Next. I just found it suspicious that a bunch of new accounts showed up making generic comments in support of OP, which to me was a red flag.
- normie3000 1y ago
  Old account here, in support of the GP's view.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  i make throwaways on this site regularly and use them until i say something to piss dang off and get shadowbanned. your comment would be a lot more interesting if you attempted to pose a counterpoint besides "BOT!".
- cryptonym 1y ago
  Old account. Not with the same words but I share concerns on Vercel's involvement, even if it's not a new thing.
  - baby 1y ago
    Old account here too, sharing my concerns about Vercel's involvement too
  - danlugo92 1y ago
    Old account here. I've had good experiences with NextJS though I didn't use like allll features for sure.
- alsiola 1y ago
  Been here seven years. Next is hot garbage and you couldn't pay me enough to work with it.
- whizzter 1y ago
  Maybe people are afraid to speak up? I've gotten a fair bit of backlash on my negative complaints about NextJS on Reddit, someone even necro-posting on a months old reply then continuing "debating". I think a somewhat neutral summary (of someone still annoyed by Vercel/Next) would be like this (Notice the distinctions between Site and App, not always clear cut but a dividing line imho): - React was created by FB to solve real technical issues as their frontend became larger and more complex. - Site creators liked it as it was one of the solutions of a real issue of reconcilliation of state and view (that often wasn't so bad in the big picture) but React was often a bit heavyweight, App creators really loved it as state reconcilliation took away that entire class of bugs that just became so much worse quickly as Apps grew (and React allowed for more people to create larger apps). (Angular and Vue has always done this also, they are parallel developments) - Pressure from those doing sites has always pushed development of React to be "simpler", often good for most parties (even if I think that Redux was mostly thrown overboard prematurely). - Part of simplifications was bootstrapping, create-react-app became one of the recommended ways to start projects (and was also incorporated into other toolchains such as .NET templates) - Heavy builds, disabled JavaScript and SEO issues was teetering issues (especially for public site builders), not entirely sure of the inspirations but Next did solve that (perhaps not always entirely elegantly initially) - React internals start to change to better support these scenarios, nobody really has objections since changes in React has seldomly been for the worse (functional components, hooks, etc). Vercel gains traction as a "do-good" choice. - After all troubles of OpenSSL, Node finally adopts OpenSSL 3.0 thus breaking create-react-app that had been "deprecated" by the React team (it's easily shimmable but it sent people looking). - People looking for options find that the only "official" way to use React according to the site is to use Next, so many start adopting it out of fear of being left behind again. - The Next model however is quite different and tailored to "site" builders and/or people running the full stack in JS - React however is quite popular outside of the JS only world for enterprise SPA and/or mobile apps where trying to shoehorn in a Next "frontend-backend" becomes overkill and extra complexity. (We used it for one or two projects but have now abandoned it for our regular work). - The React site is updated slightly, Vite and similar are now mentioned but the perception damage is there and hasn't let go (and last I checked using f.ex. Vite was not "recommended" as being an inferior option to Next for React usage) - A very popular option for CSS-in-JS (styled) becomes deprecated due to React internals changing for Next and requiring significant rework that the original author had no interest in (no really clear successor with support across the board for Next, SPA and React-Native scenarios hadn't appeared last we checked). Now this is my perception of events and I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this, the Next/React authors felt like it was the way forward due previous feedback for those that hurt (site builders) but probably misjudged or didn't appreciate how much React was used in other workloads(apps) that got disturbed while they were improving their thing. That Vercel has managed to alienate people in other ways like billing (or politics?) certainly doesn't seem to have helped either.
loliver666 1y ago
I often read that Next.js sucks. Meanwhile I and many other devs I've spoken to IRL find it does what we need it to do without any issues. Ya'll just some haters.
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  See the various other comments for concrete examples of why nextjs sucks and the team at vercel is incompetent when it comes to auth, middleware, caching, and just generally maintaining a usable framework without brutal migrations and api breakages. They have made egregious mistakes that go far beyond "move fast and break things" and well into "we should have the lawyers join this call".
  - loliver666 1y ago
    Built 4 commercial projects with it now. Not had these issues.
- arcatech 1y ago
  Just because you didn’t see the issues other people are encountering, everybody else’s experiences are invalid?
  - loliver666 1y ago
    I'm saying the impression you'd get of Next from this thread is that it literally does not work. It works fine.
    - throwaway77385 1y ago
      For all my criticisms of it, I built two commercial apps in it. I worked around the issues and it was fine. I've also built commercial apps in other stacks and they also have their warts. What I've noticed from the other stacks, however, is that the frequency of entirely unnecessary issues is simply lower. React and NextJS aren't going anywhere and one can hope that these things will improve over time. Ultimately, it's also a great employment guarantee, as companies will need people to maintain the apps that are constantly changing. I think applying scepticism to Vercel and its motives is healthy, still.
danlugo92 1y ago
I've had great experiences with NextJS.

iamsaitam 1y ago

Why is NextJS a pile of garbage?

tacker2000 1y ago
It’s VC funded, overengineered crap, specifically designed to push people into using their overpriced hosting. I hope this isnt the way that React as a whole will go in the end. But fortunately there are enough alternatives about.
throw-10-8 1y ago
- fragile under load and very difficult to debug SSR issues - inconsistent behavior between hosted and self hosted versions of the same code - horrible build times, like laughably bad multi-minute builds for trivial code bases - crappy directory based routing system with lots of weird gotchas - schizo identity JAMstack -> serverless -> ssr -> now its microvms + ai - multiple hilariously long running GH issues where the dev team is thrashing around trying to debug their own black box framework - "framework" that barely provides any of the primitives necessary to build web apps - major breaking changes around core features like routing that require painful migrations - general sloppiness, churn, and insecurity that comes from being part of the nodejs ecosystem Thats not even getting into all of the shady patterns vercel uses to lock you into their overpriced hosting. I've been a part of multiple teams that decided to build apps using NextJS, and while the FE is not my responsibility I typically got pulled in to help troubleshoot random issues. It was a complete waste of time in almost every case, and in one case resulted in the entire FE team being let go because they were unable to ship anything on time.
- molszanski 1y ago
  Try Astro my friend. React SSR with none of that next bs
  - throw-10-8 1y ago
    I've heard good things, what would you say is the killer reasons to justify being the nodejs ecosystem vs something more purpose built for ssr like php?
    - molszanski 1y ago
      As easy as php for simple stuff. And can do complex SPA stuff.
  - WA 1y ago
    You lost me at React SSR. That is part of the complexity bs. React is a lib for mapping state to the DOM. There's no DOM on the server. So React on the server is 95% useless for that purpose and hence, overengineered to create a bit of HTML and send it down the wire. I like the simplicity of Hono and use their html helper to write good old HTML that is send to the client.
    - throw-10-8 1y ago
      This is the vercelization of react peeking through, that people even associate react with ssr is an anti-pattern.
    - deepriverfish 1y ago
      how do you manage the application state with Hono? I saw their home page and it didn't mention anything about it.
      - WA 1y ago
        Hono is a server-side framework like Express. So same way like you handle application state in most server-side multi-page web apps: You just fetch whatever you need from the DB per request. "State management" really isn't that much of an issue on the server. Only on clients, when you need to map state changes to DOM updates.
throwaway77385 1y ago
If there is only one thing you take from my post, then look up "NextJS middleware auth bypass" or something along those lines. Have fun reading about that and then never touch NextJS or anything Vercel ever again. I won't repeat what the sibling poster said, but I can tell you, I've been using NextJS from v12-v15 and in that time we've had: - The catastrophic (and, at the time, UNDOCUMENTED) "aggressive, opt-out caching of all fetch calls", which confused the living daylights out of everyone who suddenly couldn't retrieve updated data from their servers. Like, don't override a native JS function that's supposed to work in an expected way, with black-box magic that adds caching behaviour that then needs to be overriden _per route_ with directives on each route. Cache headers can be added to fetch calls and are easy to configure globally via axios if needed. If you're going to do black magic, call it "nextfetch" or something - The app router / page router transition was shockingly badly handled, with so much missing documentation around dynamic routes - I don't know how many different ways of fetching / setting metadata / <head>-related techniques I've had to learn by now. It seems to change all the time. BUT, that isn't the worst part....the worst part was / is: - You couldn't, for the longest time, fetch metadata for a page without duplicating fetch requests. I think this is where their fetch-deduping thing came from. But again, black-box magic on a native JS function with very inconsistent behaviour, so for a while, all pages in our app just had to make two fetch calls per page that needed specific metadata added to the <head> - Vercel as a platform not allowing to set billing limits (have fun with your DDoS that they don't recognise as such) - Middleware is one file. That's what you get. No chaining, nothing. One god-function for everything. Just think about the anti-pattern that is - I don't know whether it's clever or terrible, but if you want to add a sitemap, you do so by defining a route by creating a folder called sitemap.xml (yes, a directory), where you then put your route.ts which is in keeping with the way the new router should work. But somehow it just doesn't sit right with me. Folders with file extensions. But it also adds a lot of ability to make the sitemap highly customisable and dynamic, so maybe it's ok - You suddenly needed to start awaiting url params, cookies, etc. which is sort of fine, but was a huge change causing warnings all over the compiler for months and months Anyway, those are just a few things off the top off my head. I already find React to be quite counter-intuitive and non-deterministic, but NextJS just adds a layer of pain on top with very, very few advantages. I am dying to get my hands on an alternative, but also don't want to rebuild all of the apps I built when I was still optimistic about NextJS.

azangru 1y ago

Vercel employs maybe half [correction, maybe a quarter] of the React core team. For example, at the keynote at React Conf 2025, it was mentioned that Andrew Clark, who, if I am not mistaken, is employed by Vercel, worked on resolving the rendering issue of React that was blocking the release of React 19 after it was discovered in the release candidate. Vercel and Next.js have been the main testing ground during the development of React server components as well. How much has Vercel contributed to the development of react over the past years?

throw-10-8 1y ago
Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components, which has also led to an explosion of complexity in react and has made it less useful as a composable library imo. The last truly useful react feature for me was error boundaries in React 16 (2017?) and I think hooks was react 16 too? These days if I need ui components for an existing SSR app I just use web components or lightweight libs like mithril.
- JSR_FDED 1y ago
  Mithril rocks. I’ve been blissfully ignoring the new hotness for years.
- brazukadev 1y ago
  > Vercel is the primary driver of react SSR / server components, which has also led to an explosion of complexity It also alienated a huge part of the userbase that decided to move away from React.
- robertoandred 1y ago
  How is lowering bundle size not a useful feature? Being able to render something once at build time instead of shipping it to users is great.

crummy 1y ago

I know Vercel has their fingers in a bunch of pies, but is there any significant vendor locking? I worked at a place where we just put nextJS in a docker container and hosted it ourselves, but maybe we would have got more on Vercel?

throw-10-8 1y ago
running nextjs in docker is notoriously bug prone, there are multiple GH issues about this with no real resolution the official recommendation we got was to just run it on vercel I would go as far to say that nextjs is not self-hostable in its current state if you expect high traffic and low latency.
- nicce 1y ago
  They have neglected many issues which would help on self-hosting until the public cry was big enough.
cryptonym 1y ago
Try to scale Next.js globally. Try to keep up to date with new versions, changes in paradigms and the way the output is rendered. It's designed to be deployed on Vercel. Production-ready hosting part of the Framework is not Open Source nor well documented. https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/59167 https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/59167 https://www.netlify.com/blog/how-we-run-nextjs/ https://www.netlify.com/blog/how-we-run-nextjs/
maelito 1y ago
I migrated https://cartes.app https://cartes.app from Vercel to Dokploy, everything is good and simpler.

mohsen1 1y ago

Also their CEO's picture with Bibi is showing their values

tipiirai 1y ago
Whoah. Wasn't aware that Guillermo Rauch openly embraces Benjamin Netanyahu
- throw-10-8 1y ago
  [flagged]
- igleria 1y ago
  The people with money don't care, as the very next day Vercel got a series F. That is funny tho because I remember him being pretty anti-israel back in our High school on the long defunct semi-official foropelle.com.ar he owned and managed. He is a programming prodigy, and that's it. Not a nice person. Nevertheless, my anecdote should only be taken with a grain of salt... After all, the only person that probably has backups of foropelle is Rauch himself. And who cares what a teenager had to say back in 2006?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - d13z 1y ago
    Maybe is not that they don't care about it. Maybe it was a REQUISITE to get that founding round.
- hshdhdhehd 1y ago
  Just looked it up https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-vercel-call-boycott-after-ceo-posts-selfie-netanyahu https://www.middleeasteye.net/trending/developers-drop-verce...
danielxt 1y ago
[flagged]

rk06 1y ago

that is your opinion, and is irrelevant to the choice. practically, vercel is a company which is heavily invested in react and react's future, so, they need to be present. moreover, this entire initiative looks like a way to reduce vercel's influence, so if you want to be mad, then be mad in 5 yrs, not now.

throw-10-8 1y ago
It is also my opinion that 5 years from now Vercel will be out of business and their customers will have moved on the next hype driven VC cash laundry.
hshdhdhehd 1y ago
Like Microsoft was invested in Web standards in the ie6 days... for their own interests. To own it.
- peterspath 1y ago
  Like chrome is doing nowadays
noodletheworld 1y ago
> vercel is a company which is heavily invested in …people paying for react. Which is fair, but do we have bend knee and suggest they have the best interests of the react ecosystem at heart? They don’t. They are invested in: people using next.js and hosting it on vercel. If that’s not what you’re doing, their interests probably don’t align with yours.

weego 1y ago

It's just a tool. Are the people that run Makita terrible? Who knows, I just use their tools to fix cars. I use tools to build apps for businesses that pay me. There is far too much ideology based decision making in tech. Just build stuff with it or not. Far too many smart people are putting their energies into such discussions that add a lot of drag to the process of society and humanity moving forward for no net gain at all.

throw-10-8 1y ago
I don't use nextjs because it's a steaming pile of unmaintainable black-box shit. The CEO's politics are just icing on the cake.
kode95 1y ago
As someone who isn't too familiar with Next and Vercel (having primarily used Nuxt, the Vue equivalent), it's helpful for me to know what's going on in the React world. Discussions like the above are actually helpful in terms of helping people choose between the various frameworks and hosts.
hshdhdhehd 1y ago
Oracle is just a tool. WordPress is just a tool. But you may care about their involvement in something you use.

SilverSlash 1y ago

What's a red flag is that there are 3 new accounts commenting on this reply and all are in agreement supporting your view. Edit: apparently there's some confusion about my comment. I neither use, like, or support Next. I just found it suspicious that a bunch of new accounts showed up making generic comments in support of OP, which to me was a red flag.

normie3000 1y ago
Old account here, in support of the GP's view.
throw-10-8 1y ago
i make throwaways on this site regularly and use them until i say something to piss dang off and get shadowbanned. your comment would be a lot more interesting if you attempted to pose a counterpoint besides "BOT!".
cryptonym 1y ago
Old account. Not with the same words but I share concerns on Vercel's involvement, even if it's not a new thing.
- baby 1y ago
  Old account here too, sharing my concerns about Vercel's involvement too
- danlugo92 1y ago
  Old account here. I've had good experiences with NextJS though I didn't use like allll features for sure.
alsiola 1y ago
Been here seven years. Next is hot garbage and you couldn't pay me enough to work with it.
whizzter 1y ago
Maybe people are afraid to speak up? I've gotten a fair bit of backlash on my negative complaints about NextJS on Reddit, someone even necro-posting on a months old reply then continuing "debating". I think a somewhat neutral summary (of someone still annoyed by Vercel/Next) would be like this (Notice the distinctions between Site and App, not always clear cut but a dividing line imho): - React was created by FB to solve real technical issues as their frontend became larger and more complex. - Site creators liked it as it was one of the solutions of a real issue of reconcilliation of state and view (that often wasn't so bad in the big picture) but React was often a bit heavyweight, App creators really loved it as state reconcilliation took away that entire class of bugs that just became so much worse quickly as Apps grew (and React allowed for more people to create larger apps). (Angular and Vue has always done this also, they are parallel developments) - Pressure from those doing sites has always pushed development of React to be "simpler", often good for most parties (even if I think that Redux was mostly thrown overboard prematurely). - Part of simplifications was bootstrapping, create-react-app became one of the recommended ways to start projects (and was also incorporated into other toolchains such as .NET templates) - Heavy builds, disabled JavaScript and SEO issues was teetering issues (especially for public site builders), not entirely sure of the inspirations but Next did solve that (perhaps not always entirely elegantly initially) - React internals start to change to better support these scenarios, nobody really has objections since changes in React has seldomly been for the worse (functional components, hooks, etc). Vercel gains traction as a "do-good" choice. - After all troubles of OpenSSL, Node finally adopts OpenSSL 3.0 thus breaking create-react-app that had been "deprecated" by the React team (it's easily shimmable but it sent people looking). - People looking for options find that the only "official" way to use React according to the site is to use Next, so many start adopting it out of fear of being left behind again. - The Next model however is quite different and tailored to "site" builders and/or people running the full stack in JS - React however is quite popular outside of the JS only world for enterprise SPA and/or mobile apps where trying to shoehorn in a Next "frontend-backend" becomes overkill and extra complexity. (We used it for one or two projects but have now abandoned it for our regular work). - The React site is updated slightly, Vite and similar are now mentioned but the perception damage is there and hasn't let go (and last I checked using f.ex. Vite was not "recommended" as being an inferior option to Next for React usage) - A very popular option for CSS-in-JS (styled) becomes deprecated due to React internals changing for Next and requiring significant rework that the original author had no interest in (no really clear successor with support across the board for Next, SPA and React-Native scenarios hadn't appeared last we checked). Now this is my perception of events and I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone in this, the Next/React authors felt like it was the way forward due previous feedback for those that hurt (site builders) but probably misjudged or didn't appreciate how much React was used in other workloads(apps) that got disturbed while they were improving their thing. That Vercel has managed to alienate people in other ways like billing (or politics?) certainly doesn't seem to have helped either.

loliver666 1y ago

I often read that Next.js sucks. Meanwhile I and many other devs I've spoken to IRL find it does what we need it to do without any issues. Ya'll just some haters.

throw-10-8 1y ago
See the various other comments for concrete examples of why nextjs sucks and the team at vercel is incompetent when it comes to auth, middleware, caching, and just generally maintaining a usable framework without brutal migrations and api breakages. They have made egregious mistakes that go far beyond "move fast and break things" and well into "we should have the lawyers join this call".
- loliver666 1y ago
  Built 4 commercial projects with it now. Not had these issues.
arcatech 1y ago
Just because you didn’t see the issues other people are encountering, everybody else’s experiences are invalid?
- loliver666 1y ago
  I'm saying the impression you'd get of Next from this thread is that it literally does not work. It works fine.
  - throwaway77385 1y ago
    For all my criticisms of it, I built two commercial apps in it. I worked around the issues and it was fine. I've also built commercial apps in other stacks and they also have their warts. What I've noticed from the other stacks, however, is that the frequency of entirely unnecessary issues is simply lower. React and NextJS aren't going anywhere and one can hope that these things will improve over time. Ultimately, it's also a great employment guarantee, as companies will need people to maintain the apps that are constantly changing. I think applying scepticism to Vercel and its motives is healthy, still.

danlugo92 1y ago

I've had great experiences with NextJS.