Next.js is a React framework for production designed to give the best developer experience with all the features needed for production: hybrid static & server rendering, TypeScript support, smart bundling, and route pre-fetching. Next.js is open source and free to use on the MIT license.
If you need to create simple CRUD applications using a MVC framework, I could say CakePHP could achieve this. But with frameworks like Laravel on the market, I would have a hard time recommending CakePHP for anything.
I love using Next.js — it's my go-to framework for new personal projects and work projects. The local development environment is quick, easy, and fun to use. The framework it uses, which puts an API that runs node in your pages subdirectory, is absolutely genius. No more middleware! It's good for quick projects and big projects alike. I wouldn't use Next.js if I did not want to heavily rely on serverless tech.
The biggest issue inherit in CakePHP, and why we switched to Laravel, is the base configuration of the program. Most people aree that CakePHP uses old (outdated, even dangerous) PHP habits. There is some truth in this: Cake has not been as quick to adapt to the newer PHP versions as they should. I was always surprised that with new major releases, from 2.4 to 2.5 for example, that the minimum version of PHP will never increase. For example, CakePHP only requires version 5.2.8 of PHP, but it would not have been difficult to update the minimum version at least 5.3 when adapting a new version.
Speed - our company had many issues scaling CakePHP to a medium size application software, even with using REDIS/memcache we would still run into many issues with the built-in ORM.
Next.js takes the best parts of React and applies them to a full-stack dev environment. With a built-in serverless API, it's easy to boot up a web application in under an hour. With easy integration with tools like Firebase, Supabase, Stripe, and countless others, Next.js is a perfect tool for getting your idea out into the real world.
