I think the unfortunate truth is the simplest. Web development has long been detached from rationality. People are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame.
reply> People are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame.
replyNot to complexity, but to abstraction. The more something is abstracted away, the more fungible "developers" become, to the eventual tune of Claude Code.
No one cares that trying to debug a modern application is as hellish as its performance, the KPI that executives go for is employment budget.
I don't know if Next.js, TanStack, etc are more abstract than Rails, Django, etc. They're undoubtedly more complex though. I also find it hard to believe that it's some sort of conspiracy by management to make developers more fungible. I've seen plenty of developers choose complexity with no outside pressure.
replyIt is fashionable, and Vercel has made a chain of partners that make Next.js/React the only official option to extend SaaS products.
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