Why I Chose Next.js (And What It Taught Me About Decisions)

I have a confession: this site has been a Gatsby site, a plain HTML site, and briefly, an over-engineered SvelteKit experiment that I never showed anyone. Each version taught me something, but the lesson was never really about the framework.

The Paradox of Choice in Software

There's a particular kind of paralysis that hits when you're building something for yourself. When you're at work, the stack is chosen. You ship. But when it's your own project — your name on it, your taste on trial — suddenly every decision feels permanent.

I spent more time choosing between static site generators than I spent writing my first three blog posts combined. That ratio is absurd, and I think most engineers would recognize it.

What Finally Clicked

Next.js won not because it's objectively the best tool (a meaningless statement anyway), but because it let me stop thinking about infrastructure and start thinking about what I actually wanted to say. File-based routing meant I could sketch out a page by creating a file. Server components meant I didn't have to choose between performance and complexity up front. The App Router felt like the framework was getting out of my way.

And that's the real criteria for a personal project: does this tool let me focus on the thing I actually care about?

The Deeper Lesson

I think there's a tendency in our field to treat tool selection as a proxy for taste or intelligence. We perform expertise through our choices. But the best engineers I've worked with share a trait that has nothing to do with framework preference: they ship. They pick something reasonable, learn its quirks, and build.

The site you're reading exists because I finally stopped optimizing the decision and started optimizing the output. Three rewrites taught me that the cost of switching is always higher than the cost of a slightly imperfect choice.

What I'd Tell Myself a Year Ago

Start with whatever you already know. Your personal site is not a proof of concept for bleeding-edge tech. It's a place for your ideas. The framework is the frame; nobody goes to a gallery to admire the frames.

Unless the frames are really good. In which case, maybe write a blog post about them.