This is insane to me, and validates my irrational dislike of next.

Definitely irrational. There are lots of logical reasons to dislike Next (like the fact that they pile new shiny bit on top of new shiny bit without caring about the regular user experience) ... but being mad that it can't run on Vite is silly.

It's like being mad that Rails can't run on Python, or that React can't run on jQuery. Next already has its own build system, so of course it doesn't work with another build system.

Isn’t the next.js build system known for being slow/memory hungry?

Luckily DX is much better now with Turbopack as a bundler. First they improved the dev server, now with Turbo builds the production builds are faster as well. Still not fully stable in my opinion, but they will get there.

It's also wise to use monorepo orchestration with build caching like Turborepo.

They did well on the turbo stuff, no doubt about it.

The main bottleneck with big projects in my experience is Typescript. Looking forward to the Go rewrite. :)

For those stuck in the past yes, they have replaced it with a Rust based toolchain, as is so fashionable nowadays.

100% rational. Nuxt/Astro FTW.

Hope that SSR remains first class as time goes on. I think Astro’s DX is superb overall, and am bullish on server-rendered components in MPAs with a sprinkling of hypermedia libs for better UX.

Some features of my SSR-based side project feel like I had to hack them on, such as a hook that runs only on app start (hacked in via middleware) or manually needing to set cache control headers for auth’d content.

All in all, really happy with it. And it isn’t next.js.

Very apt for the current moment.

Adults push back on aggressors when necessary. Children cower behind the adults.

Underscoring the parent comment and adding to it: watching technologists on a site called Hacker News cheer on the centralization of power is really something.

There's nothing cheerful in that comment, it describes a danger that inexorably draws nearer and nearer.

My post was meant to underscore the parent’s post, not argue with it.

Maybe he meant this in more general way. Or this is how did read this.

I don't think any power is as centralized as Google is to search about 10 years ago? Or Facebook is to social media in the same time frame? What has changed other than the players?

The dynamics. Discovery benefits all parties, and the middle man can take a cut in several ways (Google chose ads). The middleman never had to open up but that tube spread value instead of extracting it (at least, until they started renting seeking with the tube).

Being the one stop knowledge hubs that sucks from everyone else only benefits the leech long term.

Google still offered a path for business/individuals that allowed both sides to profit immensely via advertising. Google also guided people to sources of information once you look past the ads.

With the AI companies, they suck up all freely available and proprietary information, hide the sources, and give information away to consumers for mostly free.

Last 3 years of discourse in a nutshell. Sinclair's quote rings true once again... Just a shame people don't think of the long term cost to this trend chasing.

But then again, it wouldn't be a trend if people thought long term, would it?

I think this phase of centralising power is part of the never-ending cycle of centralisation and distribution - mainframes -> PCs -> websites -> apps, and so on round we go. We will get a "data centres -> Personal LLMs" phase of the cycle which distributes it again.

So my hope is that LLMs become local in a few years.

We've been sitting around 16Gb of RAM on a laptop for 10-15 years now, not because RAM is too expensive or difficult to make, but because there's been no need for more than that for the average user. We could get "normal" laptop RAM up to 16Tb in a few years if there was commercial demand for it.

We have processor architectures that are suitable for running LLMS better/faster/efficiently. We could include those in a standard laptop if there was commercial demand for it.

Tokens are getting cheaper, dramatically, and will continue to do so. But we have an upper limit on LLM training complexity (we only have so much Internet data to train them on). Eventually the race between LLM complexity and processing speed will run out, and probably with processing speed as the winner.

So my hope is that our laptops change, that they include a personally-adapted very capable LLM, run locally, and that we start to see a huge variety of LLMs available. I guess the closest analogy would be the OS's from "Her"; less typing, more talking, and something that is personalised, appearing to actually know the user, and run locally (which is important).

I don't see anything stopping Linux from doing this too (but I'm not working in this area so I can't say for sure).

Obviously we'll face the usual data thieves and surveillance capitalism along the way, but that's part of the process.

Something’s wrong when a key piece of foundational web tech is staring down unsustainability. Tailwind is almost ubiquitous these days. It needs to continue to exist.

Small businesses being eaten by AI is a net negative, because they’re in a unique position whereby they need to actually have to listen to customers vs just optimizing for a rando middle manger’s promotion in BigTech.

I’m sorry for what’s happening to Tailwind, it clearly sucks, but a library like that is definitely not a key piece of foundational web tech the same way bootstrap and jquery weren’t.

As an engineer, I want to believe this, but really - does it?

Most folks use frameworks because it's easier than learning how to build it all yourself - things are done for you instead. This niche is now getting eroded by AI and low-code substantially.

Couple that with my experience maintaining frontends that are far too complex for their use cases - e.g. do we really need SPA's, state sync, and reusable components for our admin tool that doesn't reuse components?

This leads me to think there's been bloat here for at least a decade. So, while vibe coding will also lead to bloat, it's easier to work with, and arguably higher value than paying for a specific framework.

It's a tragedy in life that things that are useful don't always get valued, instead being used as a stepping stone for progress, but I'm not sure that has a solution.

Webdev has overvalued DX to the detriment the user experience for the past 10-15 years. A correction has been long overdue.

> key piece of foundational web tech is staring down unsustainability

This must be satire. CSS is what's actually foundational; literally, a foundation upon which Tailwind was built.

It's a key component for many webdevs even if it isn't literally foundational.

This "key piece of foundational web tech" was released 5 years ago and gained prominence maybe 2-3 years ago. Let's not exaggerate its impact. We were perfectly fine before Tailwind and will be fine after it.

> deserves to be replaced

Replaced by what exactly? Also, when was the last time a foundational piece of tech powering of the web got replaced by something entirely different?

Also who has decided that CSS is a "terrible foundational standard"?

I've never used Tailwind. I guess it's just an alternative to Bootstrap from the docs?

There's plenty of alternative CSS frameworks.

I can absolutely see why it's difficult to monetize.

CSS is foundational.

Tailwind is not.

“Foundational” seems a bit overkill here. There is nothing foundational about it – it’s a convenience tool, albeit a very good one.

AI is disruptive technology - like other tech innovations before it, there will be casualties to incumbents. If anything, this just shows how small businesses with need to be more creative when establishing moats and sustainability in this new landscape.

You could go back in time and say this about jQuery. Tailwind's future was always questionable because CSS is growing in new and amazing ways, and wrapping the complexity of new CSS features into helper classes isn't really a sustainable model.

That said if someone wants a business model, figure out a way to get paid to get AI to make UIs using newer CSS features, because right now it's quite terrible at it.

The difference is that jQuery was replaced by other libraries, while Tailwind grows in popularity, but due to AI its creator doesn’t benefit from this popularity as much as before

jQuery was essentially replaced by JavaScript (and browser compatibility) getting better, but it continued to exist and grow because it was the de facto way to DOM manipulation, especially if you had to copy and paste off of Stack Overflow, or roll out a framework based UI.

Tailwind being the default choice for AI UIs is not that different, it can continue to grow in usage but the fundamental need for Tailwind has passed.

The difference is jquery went away because better things replaced it (in javascript). If the fundamental need for tailwind has passed why is it's usage growing? It's more that the problem solved by the paid portion of tailwind is now solved by AI.

Thank you. This thread is extremely unhinged. Maybe I’ve outgrown this place. :/

Sure. And they have to accept the consequences of considering that a need.

The purpose of a system is what it does. If the org truly cared about under-leveled employees, it would get fixed rapidly.

But they don’t.

I’ve seen enough people glossed over repeatedly and then when enough people leave and the org is in a less leveraged position, then the promos are no longer an issue. Such BS.

There isn't a single optimization. Define efficiency. Define over what time frame.

The problem the OP faced is that YouTube is optimizing under a short time frame and under the belief that employees are fungible. The latter being a common problem with big orgs, thinking there is no value to institutional knowledge. Yet in reality that is often extremely important

> You have to realize that a company is always optimizing for efficiency

Must be “efficiency” why my coworkers have constant coffee breaks to talk about kids/sport/travel while MRs are open without comments for weeks.

Why are people so determined to just shill for companies? Do you know how many people are unemployed for Christmas today, while you're out here tasting shoe leather for these organizations with more money than God?

They're not going to take pity on you, you know, no matter how much you grovel and beg.

The article is about the temptation to define yourself through your productivity. It isn’t anti-work.

With all due respect, this reads like you had an axe to grind about social media’s anti work slant and this just reminded you of that.

Many people are terrible judges of character. They either undervalue it, see it as weakness, or just aren’t able to discern the potential for malevolence.