Frontend and backend development, React, Node.js, APIs and modern web standards.
After four years on a custom React SPA, we migrated to Next.js 14 App Router. Six months later I have real data on performance, developer experience, and the things I wish I'd known before starting.
We built a live event feature. It worked fine in testing. At 50,000 concurrent users it triggered a re-render cascade that locked up browsers across the entire platform. Here's exactly what happened.
I resisted TypeScript for longer than I'd like to admit. Two years after finally committing to it for a production codebase, I have data on what actually changed — and one honest admission about where I was wrong.
I took a client site from a Lighthouse performance score of 38 to 94 in two weeks. Here's the specific changes, in order of impact, with before-and-after numbers for each.
Same requirements, three frameworks. I built a real-time task management app in React, Vue 3, and Svelte and tracked developer experience, bundle size, performance, and how much I wanted to throw my laptop.
I used flexbox for everything for three years because CSS Grid intimidated me. Then one explanation changed how I thought about layouts entirely. Here's the framing that finally made it make sense.