Stop Building Beautiful Frontends. Build Fast Ones Instead.

Israel Enyo Menyaga — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:17:32 +0000

What I learned after shipping production applications with Next.js, React, and TypeScript.

Every developer wants to build beautiful websites.

Fancy animations.

Glassmorphism.

Perfect gradients.

Complex UI.

I used to think that was what made someone a good frontend engineer.

It wasn't.

After working on production applications, I realized users don't care how impressive your code is.

They care about one thing.

Speed.

A website that loads instantly with a simple design will almost always outperform an artistic masterpiece that takes six seconds to render.

That realization completely changed how I build applications.

Performance Is a Feature

Most frontend developers focus on components.

Senior frontend developers focus on performance.

There is a huge difference.

Instead of asking:

"How do I build this component?"

I now ask:

"How quickly can the user interact with it?"

Because every unnecessary JavaScript file...

Every oversized image...

Every extra API request...

Every animation...

Has a cost.

My Frontend Stack

After experimenting with different technologies, this has become my preferred stack.

Next.js
React
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
Shadcn UI
Framer Motion
React Query
Prisma
PostgreSQL

Not because they're trendy.

Because together they help me ship products faster while keeping performance high.

DEV Community: Israel Enyo Menyaga