Is this how other people feel about NextJS? I've been trying to keep an open mind about it, but its entire design seems so antithetical to what I'm trying to accomplish. Is there a better mainstream alternative? From what I've seen NextJS is pretty commonly used.
The mainstream alternative is still to not have a "backend-for-the-frontend". If you use something like Rails, django, nodejs, use React connected to them. Or directly to something like supabase. NextJS is the extra complexity nobody needs.
It is marketed as the solution to slow starts but React is slow so the solution is terrible over-engineered.
A much better fix is to remove React and use something that is already fast like solidjs or Lit. There are much better UI Kits in Lit that I have seen in React and in the end it is just JS so the same people that can could React, can code Lit and SolidJS.
Thank you for the suggestions. Unfortunately, the only reason I'm writing React at all is because so many companies want React experience, and I figure I'd better stay up to date. If I was given the opportunity to choose technologies for myself all of the time, I'd steer clear of React at this point!
