Comment by motorest
1 month ago
> The train of thought is “what is everyone using? I’ll use that too”
I'm not so sure about that. We're seeing Next.js being pushed as the successor of create-react-app even in react.dev[1], which as a premise is kind of stupid. There is something wrong definitely going on.
It was interesting handling frontend interviews recently.
We do a 30-min tops exercise where you create a React project to show how to use useState and useEffect, etc. I help with whatever command they want to use and allow Google/ChatGPT.
More than half of the candidates had no idea how to use React without Next.js, and some argued it was impossible, even after I told them the opposite.
This surprises me a lot. I spin up new react apps with vite often to replicate issues with 3rd party libs we use. Like how do they not know you can just spin something up over on CodePen or CodeSandbox and there's not a hint of a server side paradigm required? (sure, vite has a little server but you don't really need to know anything about it)
Some devs have worked exclusively in feature mills where expectations are rock bottom and some senior setups the project for them. When recruiters don't filter them, a basic React test has to.
What are you really testing for? That sounds like a bad interview.
Basic react experience presumably. As a first approximation, it seems like every possible interview sounds like a bad interview to someone. What has worked well for you?
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You have to remember, Next is the only framework that can support some of the features in the latest version of React.
To many people, it's just basic logic: "everyone must want the latest React features, and the only way to get those is with Next, so everyone must want Next".
Vite is coming along with rsc at least. https://github.com/vitejs/vite-plugin-react/tree/main/packag...
> You have to remember, Next is the only framework that can support some of the features in the latest version of React.
That is extremely fishy, isn't it?
Not necessarily since they have to do with the inherently complex niche features like unified server/client rendering (e.g. RSC, streaming SSR with selective hydration, server actions).
Next.js is essentially the reference and test bed impl.
Where people go wrong is thinking they need to default to the inherently complex niche feature of client hydration which is a niche optimization enabled by a quirk of web tech.
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