I always use a custom server (even express will work) with next.js, because I found the middleware and edge stuff a load of overcomplicated BS. Client side works like regular react app, SSR for any pages where the initial props are just populated from the server site is easily controlled, and the whole system is simple to reason about. There are other frameworks out there to do this now, but I'm comfortable with this and it just works, so no reason to change.

I've lost count how many times I've had to struggle to enable a simple logging.

Just to make single "log("hello") appear anywhere, in a file, in a console, as smoke puffs in the sky.

Infuriating, frustrating, agitating AF.

Turning off logging in a production system is brain damaged move because inevitably production is when you need it the most.

Seems like this is the natural evolution of web fullstack frameworks. I felt the same way about Rails when using it. You either die the hero or live long enough to become the villain!

Still love Next but it's because I drank the Kool aid early on. Would be intimidated to learn it anew in current state

Similar to Meteor.js, they've tried to abstract things that aren't really abstractable (is this even a word?).

It handles edge-cases extremely poorly, and when you have those scenarios, you either need to find a workaround (so code becomes ugly and painful to maintain) or give up.

I've worked with it for a project, gladly never again.

I'll extend my feedback about Node.JS backend. Look how many flavors: deno, bun... It's a mess.

Node.js a terrible platform for server-side in comparison to Java/C#(performance/stability) & Ruby/Python(dev speed).

The only reason it is successful is that everybody knows JS/TS. But just because everybody knows it is rarely a reason to use it.

The event loop is quite nice and easy to reason about, but that's all there's to it. It is single-threaded and comes with gotchas, with at the end being in my opinion a negative aspect of it.

Many other langs/platforms offer also an event loop for concurrency, but they aren't often used. In the end no matter how much we hate threads, they serve a great purpose that has been battle-tested for so many decades.

Unfortunately companies adopt programming languages based on hype and trends, rather than technical reasons.

Until when we will have people hyped up about writing web servers in CSS, even though it doesn't make any sense to?

TLDR: It isn't only Next.JS, but the whole NodeJS thing isn't that great.

There's tanstack router and tanstack start... And you don't have to choose frameworks.

I find it infuriating how people don't utilise any TSC based compiler plugin codegen, to automate two way sync for database entities...

Millions lines of code, for nothing.

I feel like I'm being gaslit every time nextjs is discussed. I picked it up and learned it for a couple different projects because clients heard about it and wanted it. I kept finding shit like this in the OP post, making issues, asking around about it, and being told by nextjs experts that I was Doing Everything Wrong. Fine, I'll deploy on vercel, but wait this client wants to try cloudflare edge because he knows the ceo and wants to pitch for his investment firm having better access or whatever tf, so I need to get it running on that, so now I can't use some xyz version of some library, and I have to use some bleeding edge version of nextjs and... etc.

Every day that went by I wondered if I was going insane for thinking we should just go back to building apps in straight vanilla javascript. Or like, just react SPAs pointing at fastapi apps deployed on s3, which has never failed me.

For the past 5 years, my main stack is Flutter+gRPC+Go, and I read articles like this in horror and satisfaction simultaneously.

For many years I'm advocating the community to be very open about the history of web stack (and JS in particular) and be honest about it's suitability for the modern software development. The level of accidental complexity in this stack is insane and people seem to embrace it add more and more layers of it.

Personally, I try to avoid using it as much as possible. And it works beautifully. Of course, tradeoffs are everywhere, and the sheer scale of the web development community has its own benefits. For example I miss the wide choice of alternative design systems in Flutter (compared to web), but hey, flutter now decoupling it's core from design systems in 2026. But the net effect of not using fundamentally flawed tools for your products is huge.

I felt seen after reading this post. NextJS was really good somewhere around v11 when it was first becoming stable and create-react-app was unusable. It's been rapidly enshittified since then.

You know what else is infuriating? Pages that won't load (at all—just show a blank page, or in this case a too many redirects error—if you do not have cookies and local storage enabled.