Have you ever clicked a link and waited… and waited? Not just a brief pause, but long enough to wonder if the page would ever load?
Back in 2015, the web looked fast sleek, interactive, responsive. React was everywhere. Single-page applications (SPAs) dominated. It felt like progress.
But under the surface, something was off.
Websites were bloated with JavaScript. Pages took ages to load. Search engines couldn’t properly index them. Users noticed the lag. Developers wrestled with invisible issues: slow builds, convoluted tooling, fragile deployments.
Everyone could feel it the web was breaking. But no one had a real solution.
Until a self-taught developer from Argentina decided to fix it.
The Early Days: A Simpler Web
In the beginning, the web was simple. A browser asked for a file, and the server sent back plain HTML. No JavaScript. No interactivity. Just fast, static pages.
Then came dynamic websites personalized content, databases, and user logins. The web became more than just documents; it became an experience.
But users wanted more.
In 1995, a programmer named Brendan Eich created JavaScript in just 10 days. It was messy, but it made web pages interactive. Then came Ajax, allowing websites to fetch data without reloading. The web had grown up.
The Rise of React (And the Problems It Brought)
As websites became more complex, developers needed structure. That’s when React arrived.
React focused on one thing: the user interface. It introduced components, JSX, and a simple way to build UIs. But React was just a library, not a full framework. Developers had to piece together:
- Webpack configurations
- Babel plugins
- Routers
- API handlers
- Deployment pipelines
React made frontends elegant, but building full apps was still a nightmare.
The Birth of Next.js
In San Francisco, a developer named Guillermo Rauch saw the mess. He wasn’t from Silicon Valley he was a self-taught programmer from Argentina who dropped out of school at 16.
He had already built Socket.io (before WebSockets were mainstream) and worked as CTO of a startup. He believed in open source, simplicity, and a better web.
In 2016, his company Zeit (later renamed Vercel) launched a tool for frontend deployment called Now. But Rauch had a bigger vision a full-stack React framework with:
- Built-in routing
- Server-side rendering
- Zero configuration
His team called it risky. He called it Next.js.
On October 25, 2016, they released Next.js to the world. It followed six key principles:
- Zero setup No complex configurations.
- JavaScript everywhere One language for frontend and backend.
- Code splitting Faster page loads.
- Server-side rendering by default Better SEO and performance.
- Flexible data fetching – Easy API handling.
- One command deployment – Simple publishing.
Developers loved it. Next.js gave them just enough structure without locking them in.
The Static Comeback
A year later, Next.js introduced Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)a way to update static pages after they were deployed.
This was a game-changer. Websites could now be:
- Fast (like static sites)
- Dynamic (like server-rendered apps)
No more waiting for full rebuilds. No more stale data. Just performance on demand.
The Competition (And Controversy)
Next.js wasn’t alone. Gatsby (a GraphQL-powered static site builder) was rising in popularity. But Gatsby had problems:
- Slow builds
- Broken plugins
- Key features locked behind paid plans
Developers started moving to Next.js for reliability and flexibility.
Meanwhile, Vercel (formerly Zeit) rebranded and became the go-to platform for Next.js. It offered:
- Instant deployments
- Global edge functions
- Built-in image optimization
But some developers worried: Was Next.js becoming too tied to Vercel?
Then, in 2022, a privacy controversy erupted. Next.js had telemetry (usage tracking) enabled by default. Many developers felt betrayed. Vercel quickly made it opt-in, but the question remained:
Can we trust the framework we depend on?
Next.js Today: Power vs. Complexity
Today, Next.js is everywhere used by Twitch, TikTok, Netflix, and even React’s official docs recommend it.
But new challenges have emerged:
- Astro, Remix, SvelteKit new frameworks with simpler approaches.
- Next.js 13’s App Router a big shift that broke old patterns.
- Security risks a major middleware vulnerability exposed in 2025.
The question isn’t just “What’s next for Next.js?” but “What kind of web do we want?”
- A fast web?
- A beautiful web?
- An open web?
Or all three?
What do you think? Is Next.js the future, or will a new framework take its place? Let us know in the comments!
Top comments (36)
The web was not broken. There were, and are, too many layers on top of the technology that powers the internet. The fix is to reduce the layers.
The big problem with Next is that it has a hard dependency on React.
A framework like Astro lets you choose the template library.
And Nest.js doesn't even has a link to the frontend code.
While Next was a good step in the right direction. It just doesn't go far enough.
Yeah you're right I update the part thanks
While i understand you have a narrative, it feels like an insult that your post singles out one person like he is some kind of prophet.
As a developer that specialized in backend work, I never understood the need to move templating from the server to the browser. Servers are meant to push as much data as needed a fast as possible to the browser. Why let people wait after all the data is pushed to generate code, html and CSS, that can come from the server.
For a big company it will mean running less servers, but at what cost? bad SEO, users looking at spinners.
And then they go back to server side rendering. They had to invent a term to make it acceptable again. But that is what backend frameworks were doing long before Node existed.
I think there are good things that came from the SPA era like components and websockets. But I think it time to let the SPA peak libraries go, and get back to the proven methods of creating websites.
Everyone knew the web was broken. But no one had a solutionThere is now a beautiful solution, look at this , it is a really game changer in web developement
Juris
JurisDoc
Examples
Playground
Tests
No more NodeJS, JSX, Bundler, no tons of insecures modules.
Code directly in your favorite editor and you are done
The official site is contained in a single HTML Page !!!
That is the case of all the examples.
Try the awesomness of Juris
I am not th e author
Please give it an eye and tell what you think
Regards
Thanks I will check them
Isn't Juris still a new framework?
As I said Juris is a radically new approach.
The author has been working on it for 9 years.
It can be used as a library or a framework.
Give it an eye :-)
And still, Angular is the better Framework where the learning curve might look harder (but trust me it's not, especially with the newer versions) but then you'll enjoy your everyday job. Better developer experience overall. Cleaner structure and cleaner code. No magic, not so many conventions, no extra libraries needed, it is just simple, clean, and it works. Since signals were added, zonejs removed and SSR optimized 100, 100, 100 lighthouse page speeds out of the box.
Which course do you recommend for learning angular?
It's funny that I published an article yesterday with a very similar title and structure. Next.js is not the solution; node_modules bloating remains (Next.js carries around 1.5 millions LoC of dependencies, just checked), hydration issues are introduced, and the API mess continues.
Please check out my take on this; it's an introduction to the series. I am currently working on the more technical Part 2.
Good luck
There is no future 😆
We'll all get replaced with AI and AI will just randomly pick a framework based on nothing and build an app that looks like it's working, until people start actually using it. Which is not that much different from what we're already doing today. AI learned from the best afterall 😆
If people realize in time that AI is not intelligent at all, nextjs is a pretty good framework to build apps in. But I'm hoping we will see more SolidJS related frameworks in the future... Something that doesn't use webpack at least.
I agree about ai and we will see more SolidJs
When it comes to building an enterprised-based SaaS or complex app, Next.js is still a preferred choice by majority. However, there are other alternatives which have much simpler configurations and faster compiling speed for building personal projects. I've tried Vite + React (TypeScript) and Astro. They are quite recommended.
Yeah I test vite + react is very faster
jQuery? Bootstrap? AngularJS?
A lot was done before React.
Yeah but react is the most popular
1- no it is not. w3techs.com/technologies/compariso...
2- If you're doing a historical summary, you can't skip key parts.
Maybe you were too young to know the whole story? Then you shouldn't tell the story.
What we need is true simplicity again, pure and simple. Something that is simple and easy to use and yet ties everything together; the frontend and whatever you need backend. The frontend is still fairly simple, HTML and CSS. The backend is where you have a 1001 things going on and they all have to work together.
The backend is still much too complicated and there is no singular solution. What we need is a single simple base framework to handle all our backend needs and have modular components that seamlessly tie in when you need more functionality. There is a general understanding of how to write code we all should be following. I recently read something that sums it up pretty well, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). That’s what we need for the backend, which as of yet we still don’t really have do we?
The vanilla JS ist is too fast and it can handle most of task I think we should build some of our small or medium size Microservices with vanilla JS or using light weight tools to handle the complex task like routing
Next.js is nothing without Vercel. So Next.js itself does not fix anything and it is not silver bullet and has its own set of limitations.
you could run a next.js app on another cloud provider
Yeah exactly also they push so much to use vercel
Next.js really changed the game...
Yeah it's game changer but the problem is that when they released new update the previous code might broke
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