Framework · 2016–now · Platform Wars
Next.js
React with routing, SSR, and deployment opinions — App Router gravity and vendor lock-in as the default web stack.
Next.js stuck by folding SSR, routing, and image optimization into one vendor-friendly stack. Vercel marketing helped; developer ergonomics sealed it. App Router complexity is the 2024–2025 tax; still beats rolling your own webpack nightmare for most product teams.
Patterns
Context
Frameworks fought for the runtime
Front-end frameworks consolidated power; TypeScript became table stakes; Next and friends absorbed routing, data, and deploy gravity. Serverless and Jamstack rebranded old ideas with better CDNs, then cooled when auth and personalization refused to stay static. Blockchain-for-CRUD and big-bang rewrites collected dumb budgets. The winners were boring platforms with ecosystems — React gravity, Rust where systems care, Vite for greenfield bundling. The losers were narratives that skipped product-market fit or treated every App Router rewrite as destiny.
Compare with
Related
Framework · 2013–now
React
Components and unidirectional data. Won the front-end by being good enough and having a gravitational ecosystem.
Architecture · 2016–2024
Jamstack
Pre-render + CDN + APIs. The brand cooled; the pattern (static where possible) stuck.
Language · 2012–now
TypeScript
JS with a typechecker that conquered the ecosystem. The rare fad that became the floor.