[meiraleal]

> Prior to Next.js, React was hard to setup and maintain

No, it wasn't. Now it is an engineering process.

> I started using Next.js in 2017. It made React a real production framework

In 2017 I had React projects in production for years.

> React was hard to setup and maintain and hard to make it go fast (on first load)

And it only got worse and the overengineering to make it looks fast in the first load is not worth it as modern JS frameworks are faster than React out-of-the-box.

> I don't think it ruined React at all. I think it helped React gain in popularity

That's not what stackoverflow's Insights says[0]. Looks like a free fall for me.

0. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=reactjs

[junon]

> In 2017 I had React projects in production for years.

I doubt that. React wasn't stable until 2015, and wasn't mainstream until 2016.

> And it only got worse and the overengineering to make it looks fast in the first load is not worth it as modern JS frameworks are faster than React out-of-the-box.

Again, Next.js != React; the former builds on the latter, it doesn't replace it nor does it claim to be the same thing. I'm not sure why you keep conflating the two.

> That's not what stackoverflow's Insights says[0]. Looks like a free fall for me.

Perhaps you shouldn't bury the lede here. I'm also not entirely sure what your argument is, or why you hold such strong emotions without making your opinions very clear.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=reactjs%2Cnex...

[meiraleal]

> I doubt that. React wasn't stable until 2015, and wasn't mainstream until 2016.

I started using React before its 1.0 version. Your reasoning is exactly what's wrong with Vercel. Arrogant inexperienced people that think they know better, empowered by VC money. Together with some idealization of being the smartest people around makes you come with solutions like "use server" and throw tantrums when people say this is stupid for a frontend library.

> Again, Next.js != React; the former builds on the latter, it doesn't replace it nor does it claim to be the same thing. I'm not sure why you keep conflating the two.

It is okay if you can't understand what I'm saying, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. I also don't expect you to agree that the work you did contributed to an open source take-over for the sake of profit.

Edit: I just did a research to see if Meta is adopting the amazing "use server" and no public information is available, only people discussing that they aren't. That says a lot about the applicability of this feature and the direction React is being leaded to.

[aurareturn]

I was a tech lead and managed a massive project (multiple billions of page views per year) that did a complete rewrite with React in 2014-2015.

React was complete shit back then - especially the first load speed. It was not ready for "real" production. We basically built an internal framework on top of React for things like server side rendering (which no one did with React back then), above the fold loading optimization, developer experience, devOps on top of React. We basically built Next.js internally.

So no. It was not production ready for real performance-based websites. Next.js made it significantly better as soon as it came out.

[meiraleal]

React was a terrible idea for a static page in 2014-2015 and is an even worse idea for a static SSR page + hydration in 2023. React back in 2014 was devised to be a performant way to create SPAs. Of course it wouldn't be good to use it as if it was PHP. It is still a bad idea.