With ASP.NET, a React/Angular project is separate, there's a separate model layer, and you have to keep that in sync with the .NET models.
With Next, there's true code reuse between client and server. Next is smart about shipping your code where it needs to run, server, client, both. You can even mix and match from page to page: Server-side render one page per request; statically generate another at build time.
As much as I like ASP.NET, Next has leapfrogged it for web apps.
> As much as I like ASP.NET, Next has leapfrogged it for web apps.
Look, I like NextJS as much as the next guy - I'd say it's my main working technology right now. And I've never built anything on .Net - I know its characteristics from watching tutorials and reading docs.
My take however is that "web apps" is a very broad world. NextJS gives you a thin API layer. There is no model layer to speak of. You're left fending for yourself in the wild, wild world of JavaScript.
.Net Core, on the other hand, offers a batteries-included, heavy-lifting, opinionated framework, with an immense toolbox and many conventions to guide you. There has to be a reason why people speak such wonders of it. If I had to build something enterprise-y with more than handful of devs it would probably be my choice.
The grass isn't greener. I've built in both - I have a .NET Core/Angular SaaS app that I created and sell, and I've been building greenfield in Next. I much prefer Next.
The duplication in .NET/Angular has never been worth it...not once. And having network calls for everything is unnecessarily painful.
I started the app in 2019, when RESTful SPAs were all the rage. I bought into the hype that you should have API endpoints for everything no matter what, because you'd soon have a mobile app and daemons and this and that.
Turns out, YAGNI. It would've been better to server-side render and only create API endpoints when necessary.
That's what I like about Next: Static generate where you can, server-side render per request where you can't, SPA where necessary - and the layers are as flat as can be. It's the best of all worlds.
That being said, I've worked in .NET for ~16 years now, and I like it more than JavaScript/TypeScript. But I'd still rather develop a web app in Next and put any background services elsewhere in .NET if needed.
> But I'd still rather develop a web app in Next and put any background services elsewhere in .NET if needed.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I think we're essentially saying the same thing. I would start pretty much 99% of my projects in NextJS. But if I needed to reach for something doing complex logic and scaling to a larger team, I could always add a .Net service to that later.
If anything the model layer in Next.js is superior because you can use the same model layer to build the page SSR, and then Next.js will gracefully transfer the entire model layer over to the client where your app can continue to work against it.
That sounds nice for the main user interaction, but what about when you need more heavy lifting of async tasks and side effects?
Like I get a shared model being accessed "directly" for the things that the UI displays and manipulates. But once you click an Order button you have transactions to process, ledgers to update, notifications to dispatch.
That kind of code doesn't float between client and server, it needs to happen once the order has been received regardless of the client state.
You can offload that to other services, lambdas, etc. but that's the sort of thing that you can just do all-inclusive in a standalone backend be it Node, .NET, Go, etc.
> With ASP.NET, a React/Angular project is separate, there's a separate model layer, and you have to keep that in sync with the .NET models.
The separation of models is indeed inevitable when there is JS on the client and not-JS on the server. That's a 'problem' common to all non-JS back-ends.
However there are three points I'd make.
1. That's often a good thing, not a flaw, in that it enforces a mapping boundary between what the server and the client know and therefore strongly discourages leakage of data.
2. Mapping requirements of this type are much too trivial to base a tech stack choice on. It's barely worth considering given that mappings only need doing once and updating once per change. They are also very good protection against accidentally exposing new stuff precisely because changes in models don't automatically impact the client.
3. If this model syncing was really an issue (it usually isn't) you could try Blazor. By doing C# on the client as well as the server you get to share the same code/models. As per point 2 I don't think that's a good enough reason to switch tech stacks, but Blazor also has its place.
> 1. That's often a good thing, not a flaw, in that it enforces a mapping boundary
That just sounds like mandatory busywork that may or may not prevent poor programming practices. I'd rather pick a framework for productivity.
> 2. Mapping requirements of this type are much too trivial to base a tech stack choice on.
Trivial for large corporations with money to burn, maybe. A huge time-waster for my startup.
> 3. If this model syncing was really an issue (it usually isn't) you could try Blazor.
Blazor is cool, but the bundle sizes are still too large right now, and it doesn't have the ecosystem of web components that JavaScript does. Sure, you can integrate, but you're just making life more complicated for yourself. It feels like too little, too late.
> That just sounds like mandatory busywork that may or may not prevent poor programming practices. I'd rather pick a framework for productivity.
Mandatory busywork implies stuff with no real purpose. I specifically pointed out the purpose. You may not agree with the cost/benefit involved in doing it, but that's a preference and doesn't automatically make someone else's way of working busywork. And personally I find it increases productivity by eliminating a whole range of security concerns.
> Trivial for large corporations with money to burn, maybe. A huge time-waster for my startup.
This largely depends upon if you accept that the work itself is of benefit. If you believe it's just busywork, then whilst my own opinion differs, your conclusion is reasonable for your situation.
> Blazor is cool, but the bundle sizes are still too large right now, and it doesn't have the ecosystem of web components that JavaScript does.
You're right on the sizes and the ecosystem (though that is not Blazor-specific and is something no non-JS client-side tech will ever be able to compete with).
I do ASP.NET and Blazor (alongside Node, Go, Python, Rails etc) and TBH whilst personally I see great value in Blazor it feels like that's mostly for back-office or enterprise applications where you get the incredible productivity (that much is true) and don't need to worry about the sizes or, depending on how you implement it as this is optional, the need for a persistent web-socket connection.
With ASP.NET, a React/Angular project is separate, there's a separate model layer, and you have to keep that in sync with the .NET models.
With Next, there's true code reuse between client and server. Next is smart about shipping your code where it needs to run, server, client, both. You can even mix and match from page to page: Server-side render one page per request; statically generate another at build time.
As much as I like ASP.NET, Next has leapfrogged it for web apps.