A Few Quick Thoughts on NextJS...

….From someone still learning the framework.

NextJS is a React Framework created by Vercel which enables server-side rendering and static website generation.

The benefits of Next can seem incremental to a new-ish front-end developer like myself; but for React developers who have been in the game for a decade-plus, its benefits over older frameworks are potentially huge.

Server-side rendering can improve performance and SEO, while Next’s code-bundling can further improve load times by serving all client code in a single file to a client’s browser. Next also offers TypeScript support, which can improve code quality with static type-checking features. And finally, there is Next’s Edge Runtime - a highly scalable delivery framework based on available Node.js APIs which delivers dynamic rendering with the lowest possible latency.

It’s all very exciting, nerdy and only slightly over-my-head; seriously, I just learned that JavaScript is the only language that can executed by client-side browsers. But, looking forward…

Here’s what I would like to build in NextJS (that hopefully can be done faster / better / cheaper than with other platforms):

Blockchain Explorer: Crypto token data provides a rich forest of insight on market behavior. If I can create some kind of cross-chain explorer with key metrics on a few favorite tokens (I’m thinking Solana, NEAR, Avalanche and PolkaDot) - boy howdy!

Retail Chatbot: You know what we need more of? Retail chatbots, especially for particularly sensitive consumer segments who hate shopping in stores (I’ll let you guess who those are). You know what ChatGPT has unleashed lots of? Chatbots. Follow the logic…follow it…..

Decentralized Social Media Platform: I’ve heard that Mastodon is for creepsters, and I’m pretty sure we (collective we, society, developers, whatever….) can do better. And contrary to conventional opinion, I think the bots should thrive. When I log into my as-yet-unnamed-decentralized project, I want to drink deeply from the full cup of cyborg (human+AI) knowledge. Generated AI images next to real photos of a puppy, gimme gimme. What is real anyway, man? Perception is reality. Dig me.

Do I currently possess the skillset to build any of the above? Bits and pieces, mostly bits. But like Bella Baxter, I would quite like to push the boundaries of what is known, even if it means paying the price. It is the only way to live.

Until next time.