This is exactly how my best friends and family would write in my Show HN if I ever post one.

I happen to be from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, so I never met Nate — yet! But I'm pretty sure our paths will cross in the long long road of web development ahead of us :)

> the most transformative step forward since Next.js

I'd consider Next.js a giant step backwards, frankly.

Would you mind elaborating on this?

Worse things have been said about them

Thanks! Get in touch with me if you guys do end up using it.

> most transformative step forward since Next.js

Can't help but roll my eyes here

I am a fierce hater of the complexity and closed-ness which Next.js became, BUT "results don't have to be explained" and Mr. Guillermo unarguably executed the hell out of it. It IS the default for new frontend developers, right now. I don't think it will necessarily remain, specially because of things like One!

It’s the default because Vercel dumped millions of dollars into devrel and marketing. It’s not and never was definitely better than other available options.

arguably, the devrel does actually make it a better option though

That is true. Good docs, examples and community wins.

Good docs? Have you tried to get definitive answers on image optimisation, response modification, error codes, or much anything other than “serve these react components at this path”?

When there is documentation, it’s often a mishmash of incomplete examples and links between the two totally incompatible editions of the framework.

Closed? How? Genuinely want to know more. Don't have much experience with ecosystem.

There are those who would say they created a "bait and switch" from their open framework into their closed for-profit deployment platform. That is not objectively wrong, though. But still, many complain. I say: good for them. Let competition happen.

Unless you want a very painful experience then you basically have to host it on vercel.

So far I've only used Next.js for static site generation, for a couple of long-term projects. Self-hosting it is as easy as any static site. Upgrading major versions of Next.js, however, has been fairly painful. The experience made me reconsider the decision to use it, and I'm keeping up on possible replacements like Remix. But honestly I'm getting a lot of value out of the framework that I'm in no hurry to change.

For dynamic sites that require running Next.js on the production server, I'm not too interested in trying because it feels like too much vendor lock-in. The same reason I wouldn't consider Vercel for hosting, since they develop the framework that is already a big dependency.

I think this is the key though really, and what peeves me the most.

NextJS is fine to self host if you don't need any of the features that actually make it worth dealing with all the additional complexity.

Essentially if you want any of the special sauce you have to host on vercel, or use opennext guides to build equivalent infra.

Its just not worth the complexity for me to use.