The world of web development moves quickly, new tools with their new releases coming out constantly, which can feel overwhelming for both beginners and experienced developers.
Some developers make the mistake of trying to shortcut the learning journey by jumping straight into frameworks like Next.js without mastering the fundamentals. This often leads to getting stuck, moving aimlessly from documentation to Google searches or AI tools, and feeling lost in a tangled web of ever-changing technologies.
In this chaos, it’s easy to lose track of the connections between tools and the natural progression of learning web development.
Next.js is built on JavaScript and React, so jumping straight into it without understanding React can be challenging. So before diving into it, it’s important to get comfortable with React basics so you have a solid foundation to confidently start building Next.js applications.
A great place to begin is the React foundations tutorial available on the official Next.js website: https://nextjs.org/learn/react-foundations
So you may ask, why do we need another tool if React is already there?
Although React is a powerful library, as its name indicates, just a library, it doesn’t provide everything needed to build a complete, full-stack application on its own.
Because of this, developers often use other tools and technologies with React to handle the other parts of the app.
To get your head around this, it helps to know the difference between a library and a framework.
A library is a collection of functions, utilities, or components that you can use. You remain in control of how your application should be and decide when and how to call the library’s features.
React follows this approach. It focuses on building user interfaces and provides several APIs that developers can use to create and manage components.
For example, React DOM connects React to the browser and is responsible for rendering and updating React components in the DOM. React also includes functions such as useState, useEffect, createContext, and useContext, which help manage state, handle side effects, etc.
Since React operates as a library, not a framework, it delegates other features, including routing, data fetching, advanced state management, and server-side logic, to customized methods or third party tools.
A framework, on the other hand, provides a more complete structure for building an application. It defines how different parts of the project should be organized and usually includes built-in solutions for common tasks such as routing, server rendering, data fetching, bundling, caching, and other development tooling.
In this way, the framework controls the overall flow of the application and calls your code when needed, rather than the other way around.
For example, React is a library focused on UI components, while Next.js is a framework built on top of React that provides a full structure for developing modern full-stack applications.
Next.js has become a popular choice for building modern React applications that are fast, scalable, and SEO-friendly. This guide is intended for novice users and will provide an overview of the fundamentals of Next.js, including why developers use it, the process for creating your first project, and the core concepts such as pages and routing.
You can read the full step-by-step tutorial on Medium, where I walk through the entire setup, configuration, and practical examples.
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