I think I’m just paranoid, but nextjs has always felt like a trap for the boot camp participant.

I think Next.js has its place in enterprise software. For the rest of us I think it's time to simplify. I like to do that to the point of absurdity.

Why I'm writing pure HTML and CSS in 2025:

https://joeldare.com/why-im-writing-pure-html-and-css-in-202...

lol when i try to explain this to fellow devs in discords they adamantly fight me on it and i dont even bother getting further into it.

When I see Next.js on a job posting as a "requirement" or even as a "something we use" I immediately discard it

the App router move really killed it. The Pages router made so much sense, and was so intuitive. I have no idea why the team thought it was a good idea to completely abandon the fundamental innovation that made Next good in the first place.

Am I taking crazy pills? I love Next.js. What React partial SSR solution is better?

Honestly I feel like this about the entire node/js ecosystem. Seems pretty cursed from top to bottom to me. And each attempt to un-curse it just adds more frameworks and layers and abstraction and new paradigms

just log your rest services only, not your view. nextjs is a view. it's a half on the server, half not on the server thingy. it would never be consistent anyway.

makes more sense to go full CRA though. it's just a view

Do people feel this way about Nuxt too? They have recently joined Vercel…

Agreed. I've run into so many issues with documentation and sane defaults, and the Vercel team response is to always gaslight you into thinking you've done something wrong.

The truth is, its just poorly designed software.

Where it shines is batteries included for getting started. They realized if you have low activation energy requirements, you will win a critical mass of people who put up with your crap. A good metaphor for devtools overall.