Giving Up On Next.js | Theo Reacts

I'm an App Router fan. I'm really thankful I adopted it. Sadly, not everyone is.

This story by Brandon from FlightControl showcases the pain they had trying to adopt App Router and React Server Components early. While I obviously have had a different experience with RSCs, there are many points I agree on, so why not share with the world?

In the end, they'd take Remix over NextJS. Would you?

S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[DeanRTaylor]

It's kinda disconcerting to hear that you were on the phone with people at vercel and having issues with the app router while deploying it, maybe you've mentioned it before but I've only ever heard you promoting the app router and saying you're using it in production, it is probably one of the biggest reasons that I even considered trying it, not for anything big I must say.

I get that you feel that you were helping people but Is it not possible that you only got what you needed fixed and it probably wasn't actually production ready for most other people?

It comes across a little disingenuous as you are, I believe, sponsored by vercel.

[scrubmunch]

ah yes, blitz a framework for next.js, a framework for react, a framework for javascript!

[flybayer_official]

Clarification: we don't think serverless is evil 😄 Serverless is awesome and has many great use cases. We do prefer running our user facing requests in containers. Both should be easy to test and see what's best for your each use case.

[krellin]

as a backend engineer it is insane to me how much frontend devs overcomplicate their lives
wtf is this shit

[blueprint]

In general, last winter was a difficult period for learning Next.js and React. While new concepts were rapidly being introduced, all the tutorials and information were based on the old page router, leading to confusion, especially with RCS and with the new feutures people wanted to learn thru the Next js docs. Most of the things i manage to get to work where months after when i found a new tutorial . Next js docs did't help at all

[alastairtheduke]

28:12 call production-ready whatever you want, but a piece of software needs to be free of bugs when released for wide adoption. Who else other than vercel needs to make that determination?

[Beyram]

I fixed all my nextjs problems installing an npm package.
The package was called remix I think?

I really love the fact that I don't have to call them on the phone to fix my production deployments, they use something called web standards which make those issues almost impossible to encounter

[Daniel-vlzm]

Yeah at this point I honestly don't see a single argument for using NextJS over Remix in any project. Especially with the new Vite dev server Remix has just dropped

[flybayer_official]

the Next patches we have are super minimal (like changing the caching headers for images). nothing that would affect dev server memory leaks. Also many other people are experiencing the memory leak/crash issue too, as you can see by replies to my original tweet of this article

[NeoChromer]

is this a 40 minute video of Theo coping nextjs is good?

[julianjackson]

I'm liking the speed at which I can build things in Remix. It feels like a lot of overhead knowledge is needed just to navigate the pitfalls, where as in remix, I don't need to be super clever about approach just to make it work.

[voidmind]

For every dev on my team, the Next.js dev server crashes at least once a day. We are still using the page router with version 12, so the stability issues don't seem to be only for the new stuff.

[gideonkonig]

Great video!

This was one of my favorite ones of yours that I have seen so far. Specifically, the second part was amazing.
Watching you write code and play around in a small project like this and explaining the various concepts that you are using was really helpful for me, and I highly encourage you to make more content like this.

I kinda ignored Server Actions and the specifics of SSR and the Server/Client boundary, as I am still somewhat new, and wanted to just "get started" without getting overwhelmed. For this reason, I used the T3-Stack with tRPC and the NextJS App Router and stick to "use client" everywhere for now.

After having watched this video, Server Actions clicked for me, and I now question the usefulness of tRPC if the same functionally is now seemingly built into NextJS.

[cagdasucar]

I appreciate the candor in bias for Vercel, but the whole video feels like making excuses for them. The article's points are dead-on.

[rmdashrfv]

"Try your best to engage with the points, not the fact that I am paid by Vercel sometimes". This is the current state of software engineering in 2024 folks

[JimmyKeeseeJr]

I love how he spoke right past paraphrasing(annoying useEffect errors that cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars). Next is a mess. Use a web server. Use a client library. Run a server. Your client library shouldn't be your server.

[zainkhalid]

This literally clarifies all of the issues I'm facing with NextJs.
Thank You So Much!

[FzsHotDogInDonut]

After a lot of thoughts I went with remix. It was the best decision I have made.

[NeoChromer]

yeah, Remix seems to be wining the long term war of the frameworks

[GermansEagle]

Theo, you must agree that nextjs dependency with vercel is not safe for a company. The way they deal with middleware is proof.