Ask HN: Rails vs. Next.js vs. other JavaScript/TS back end in 2023

[Mystery-Machine]

Hi everyone!

I'm working on a web app that's starting to grow. It's currently written in Next.js, both frontend and backend (database is PostgreSQL), but as complexity of new features increases, I'm starting to hit the limitations of Next.js framework. I love Ruby on Rails and would love to rewrite the backend part of Next.js (and keep React frontend) to Ruby on Rails. Currently there are only two developers actively working on the project: me and another external developer that doesn't know Ruby/Rails, but has pretty good experience building web apps in Next.js. He's not a fan of switching to Rails for obvious reasons. I'm thinking of adding Rails backend to build the features that I need: bg processing, db changes/versioning, authorization, etc. and slowly replace Next.js backend with Rails, while keeping the Next.js frontend code mostly intact. The external developer will be able to query Rails API and continue working on frontend, and I'll take care of any backend in Rails. Any opinions why I should or shouldn't do this are highly appreciated! :) Thanks!

[dylanhassinger]

Transitioning from Next backend to a standalone JS app would be more seamless, u could copy paste. Could use Express or Apollo Server for it

[Mystery-Machine → dylanhassinger]

Thanks! That's a good idea for easiest transition. However, what I'd like to see more than seamless transition (of negligent amount of code), is a transition to a fully-featured framework that would allow me to build new complex functionality rapidly.