[justsee]

Next.js positions itself as a hybrid framework, and is recommending SSG (static site generation) by default over SSR.

See this discussion [1] with the response from rauchg (framework author and Zeit founder) outlining where they are heading.

This ability to easily mix SSG and SSR pages within the one project, the PHP-inspired philosophy of simple file-based routing for pages, and pre-configured babel / webpack with easy customisation are a few things that draw people into next.js dev.

Like anything that deals with reasonable complexity there are a bunch of concepts to understand, but once that happens next.js feels like a thin layer around "it's just react".

I particularly like being able to drop api functions with a standard req / res signature into `pages/api` to immediately have some server-side api endpoints available, which can be deployed to Zeit's now as Lambdas with minimal fuss. It significantly reduces the friction of thinking about and implementing front-end sites with custom api endpoints for whatever you're building.

[1]: https://github.com/zeit/next.js/discussions/10437

[mc3]

Does this mean I can treat it a bit like PHP hosting of yore, where I upload a single file and stuff just works? No NPM etc? That would be compelling!