Choosing Next JS as my JavaScript Framework of Choice

I am on the lookout for a well-managed (JavaScript) framework, and I have chosen Next.JS.

Having accumulated ample experience, clients, and income from JavaScript projects, I am contemplating expanding into back-end development tutoring. Currently, I offer tutoring in the basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which has proven to be quite successful.

Still, I always had this nagging excitement to acquire some back end skills in JS. I mean, if the student is learning C#, I teach the basics (like I do with JS). and then, I continue and also teach the student how to build web apis, authentication servers, web apps, deployment.

The whole thing.

And, of course, prior to my 2021 retirement from developer work, I used to make plenty of money as a freelance contract developer. So, I do have substantial back-end API server development skills and experience. I wanted to put this experience to the JS side of things as well.

So, I was waiting for the right moment till my JS skills reach a certain maturity, along with my JS tutoring skills, to pick up a framework to experiment an explore. This search has been happening since 2020. Now, 4 years later, I know and have understood a few things.

the JS landscape is filled with libraries and libraries and frameworks and frameworks. It’s a real mess.Every brand, every open-source community, tutorials and books and videos have their own strong opinions about what they like and what they don’t like.We are spoilt with choice, which is not always a good thing.

So, I searched and searched and found a few options.

1. You can simply use Express JS along with Node JS and build your web api. (this also means, you are endless wrangling with libraries that come and go from different corners of the internet)
2. Strapi seems like a cool library. It seems to focus exclusively on CMS, which might not be what my students want.
3. Next JS was the third option.

Ultimately I liked Next JS for the following reasons.

1. It seems like a decent outfit, reminds me of Microsoft a lot in terms of documentation and developer communication.
2. It’s a full solution, similar to .NET, in that everything I need (learning, libraries, deployment) is available from a single brand/company.
3. As an added bonus, I also get to improve my React JS skills. Of all the UI libraries, I dislike React the least.
4. It combines back end and front end, very similar to what .NET does with API and Razor Pages. So, I will feel right at home.

I have started learning from their official learning docs. Some code is already available on my github repo for students.

NextJSForStudents

Knowing at least one framework can be useful in the coming years, and worth investing my time and money.

This is a copy of my original blog post on medium.