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by kobalsky 519 days ago
on next.js first page loads are almost instant for very complex sites with very little work on the optimization side.

it's an incredibly polished server and it does a lot of complex stuff to be so fast, but it's also well documented.
2 comments
jjordan 519 days ago
It's far too much magic for my taste. I'm really looking forward to the first non-beta release of Tanstack Start. It offers many of the same advantages without the overkill.
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logankeenan 519 days ago
I don’t think this answers the parent question. Database queries still needs to be made and a view still needs to be rendered. What complexity does next.js solve?
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esperent 519 days ago
Shamelessly stollen from another comment here:

> Uses the same code to render on server and in browser, enables moving render logic from browser to server and vice versa without doing a complete rewrite.

However, the next question is, does it solve these without adding needless additional complexity of it's own?

I can't help but feel, while I'm using it, that surely it shouldn't feel this overengineered and unintuitive. I mean, I like React, and I understand it well, footguns and all.

I feel like there might be better solutions out there - even using React - and if it wasn't being heavily promoted by a large corporation then something else would be in it's place.

Also, how much of the functionality of Next.js (Image component processing, for example) is designed to funnel you into using Vercel rather than being genuinely the best solution?

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kobalsky 519 days ago
> What complexity does next.js solve?

in our case it solves performance, it actively keeps cache warmed up preventing it from ever serving a stale page or serving a non cached hit, preloads content for fast navigation, optimizes images, it's lightweight, scales horizontally, it's stable.

it has all the bells and whistles the big boys have, for free, you almost don't need to think about it, just follow some guidance.

while people say it's too much magic (there are 4 cache layers), you are always free to pop up the hood and read the documentation, which is excellent.

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