Getting away from React ecosystem

Next.js as a go to stack

For many years Next.js was a go to framework for me. If I wanted to build something fast, Next was my choice; if I wanted to build a fully developed dashboard from scratch, Next was my choice, etc. To be honest, most of the time I enjoyed building apps with it. Full-Stack apps were never easier for seasoned JavaScript/TypeScript engineers.
A little bit of Prisma here, a bit of Server Actions there, tiny pinch of Tailwind CSS and you're good to go.

You quickly get used to it. Implement different caching, whether on fetch api dircetly or by using unstable_cache or some other option that was experimented with along the way. You're developing your app now - BOOM - there's a new next.js version with unstable stuff now being stable. Naturaly, you upgrade while developing because is faster and safer then planning an update later and because you want those stable features.

Once you update, Next.js has shifted it's approach to caching. Now there's a new directive called use cache;
but, you have to enable it via next.config.js and if you do it also enables different caching behaviour for the whole app, which you now have to understand.

Turns out it made my development slower for a lot of different reasons. One being that you now have to add suspense around every little thing in your code, because of faster data loading and non blocking rendering. Ok. I see the point, but - I have to either add layout level loading.tsx and move quickly and later refactor everything to proper suspense usage or I have to suspense everything at once which requires a lot of nested components and wrappers,
especially if you're like me and you get used to those server calls instead of client ones. I even found some strange behavior with this new approach and posted a Reddit thread about it.
I know, you can work around this stuff, but the thing is this was just a drop in ocean of things I can't even remember, but were making a DX worse in the last year or so.

I am not even going to write about how blurry the line between server and client has become, and how React now is pushing small changes to accommodate the next.js way of doing things. Which is fine in some manner, but I don't know... For me the amount of (bad) magic React and Next.js were introducing lately got too much.

Enters SvelteKit

Boy was this refreshing? Signals are part of Svelte, fetching data is opinionated, forms are easy to work with, routing is an older brother to next.js', the whole framework is opinionated and I loved it. It was Ruby on Rails or Laravel but for JavaScript ecosystem, in a good way. It has strictly defined idea and way of doing things which just felt right and predictive for the most part.

I found that Svelte has it's own passionate community of engineers that really enjoyed making the framework better.

This blog is written in Svelte. I love that SvelteKit is so opinionated, because I enjoy the structure it brings. It is also very flexible. Some would say it's too much, writing script tags, etc, but I find logical.
.svelte files are your components and they use script for JS and plain HTML for markup. No, className or different renamed attributes, you feel closer to native HTML feel as it should be.

Now with remote functions coming in, mutations and data loading is even easier. locals object for shared server state is also very powerful. Things just work. And for me at least with much enjoyable DX then I had with Next.js for decent amount of time. For now I am sticking with SvelteKit for new personal projects at least, until I learn more about it. JS ecosystem is constantly changing so it would be stupid to lock myself on one thing. But for now - good job SvelteKit!

Should you still learn React?

This doesn't mean and shouldn't discourage you to continue learning React. Especially if you already started. React is still the most used frontend JS library (officially not a framework 😅) today. It is still at the top of the latter when it comes to employability, as number of companies are using it. Developer community is strong and getting stronger day by day, especially with AI's being trained on large number of React coding practices and samples. So, if your goal is to find a job in programming or just want something that's backed up by heavy developer community, React is still a good choice.
This article is mainly written from the personal DX stance and how it formed my way of thinking recently.

In the ever-changing JS community it is imperative to be profficient in something, but that doesn't mean once you become profficient, that you should stop exploring other stuff or compare it to what you already know. It is an ongoing process of learning that keeps us sharp and competetive. Gives us new perspecitives on how things could work and look like. At the end, that same curiosity and learning process is to "blame" for majority of good things we have and use in today's tech. Essentially, that's something that no AI could ever take away from us, since it is formed and shaped by what we as engineers geek about.