We can all likely agree on one thing: React is one of the most popular solutions out there for building interactive web applications, both small and large.

And it is used by so many startups and companies that it is a very valuable skill to have these days.

I discovered Next.js a couple of years back, and was intrigued with what it was trying to accomplish.

In this post, I’ll describe my personal journey with Next.js. I’ll also discuss why I believe that it is the right time to add it to your React stack.

The Early Web

Back in the mid-2000s, when the web was young and growing, developers moved from static only HTML pages to more robust and dynamic solutions.

This gave us the ability to create pages with dynamic content using tech like PHP (mind you, JavaScript was very young and non-performant at this time).

You could have a single profile.php page and it would take care of Alice, Bob, John, Mehul, and all 15,000 registered people on your website – very convenient.

Then came the JavaScript age. People started realizing that there was this language supported for the web which could be used for so much.

You could set up dynamic form submission, background HTTP requests, nice scrolling effects, and even create webpages on the fly.

The rise of JavaScript and libraries like jQuery allowed web developers to create nice interfaces fully customizable with JavaScript.

Soon, every web developer started pushing more and more JavaScript down the network to the client. Sure, technology evolved, mobile phones and PCs became better with more RAM and cores, but JavaScript started evolving faster.

More functionalities, more features, and more frameworks meant a better user experience and the ability to create an app-like feeling on the web.

But this also meant pushing more and more JavaScript down the network on devices that could not keep up with evolving JavaScript limits.

#react #next #javascript #developer