Two years of NextJS

I was always one of those developers that resisted frameworks and JavaScript. Call me a hater if you want, I don't care. I have my reasons, and besides you can do a lot with just HTML and CSS. I saw JavaScript as something that adds a bit of pizazz to a website, sure it does have it's uses but it's been abused for so long that I resisted any urge to learn it properly. I'd spent a lot of time working with PHP, developing WordPress themes for public sector clients while employed by dxw, so I'm not afraid of programming languages per-se.

Then about two years ago an old friend got in contact about doing some UX and UI work on a start up he'd co-founded. Since I'm self employed and was actively looking for work I jumped at the chance to work with him.

They had one developer already onboard, and the tech stack was going to be Node using either Angular or NextJS with React. We choose the later.

I had some very minor experience with React. I'd done Wes Bos's excellent JavaScript for Beginners course and then out of curiosity I did his React course too. Because at the time everyone was going all in on React, so I wanted to have at least a little bit of an understanding of it (before slagging it off).

When we started the serious development work, I was resistant to using a UI framework, but in the end I gave in and we used Chakra UI. This was mainly so we could concentrate on the other aspects of the build. I later refactored the entire code base to remove Chakra UI and replace it with as much HTML and good old CSS as possible. There was mention of Tailwind as a replacement for Chakra but I know snake oil when I see it, so politely refused.

Two years in to the project, we've now gone through a couple of different developers all of whom have taught me something new. I'm a much better JavaScript (and TypeScript) developer than I was two years ago. Although some things are still a mystery to me. I have also learned a lot about NextJS and Jamstack development, but still wonder if we would have been better building this using PHP or Ruby on Rails, the associations of the later would make complex tasks we'd done in JS much much simpler.

Because we're bootstrapping this project and money is tight, it's just myself and the two other co-founders working on it at the moment. We've got a long way to go and it's going to be a slog to get our product to where we want it. As the sole UX guy, I think we need to build a checkout with credit/debit card flow to bring down the barrier to entry for new players. As the sole front-end guy I need to build that checkout flow. But that's about it, when we've (or I've) done this we should have pretty much complete product.

Moving forward, I would like to transition away from JavaScript. Whenever I get a chance to refactor code, I'm pulling in as much native HTML as possible. I'm constantly tweaking things and embracing new technology. I love things like the Popover API and the new HTML <dialog/> element, implementing both will equal less node modules and dependencies which equals a better (and faster) user experience. Actually thinking back most of my de-chakra tasks were about implementing shiny new HTML and CSS.

At the moment we are all working hard to get our organic search working for us and doing this by constantly tweaking content and writing lots of blog posts in the hope that, "this time next year we'll be millionaires".

All joking aside we're aiming to have enough users and players to pay our hosting bills and feed ourselves without having to look for side projects. Anything on top is a bonus.

So if you're in to table top gaming and curious, please take a look at Roll 4 Gravity and help spread the word.