There are two general styles of developing apps, programs, webpages, and live services. As you might infer from the title, they are low-code and high-code.

High-code is what you might think of as "traditional" development. A person or a group of people sit down and type out the code they're using for the application they're creating, whatever that application may be.

It could be anything from a simple Hello World script or a webpage with just a bit of text on it to some of the most complex software on the planet.

Low-Code is a means of development where you use tools and pre-made modules to perform the functions you want.

Consider something like cooking a meal. In high-code development, you might gather all the ingredients to make a broth from scratch, bake your bread, and cook a meal using base ingredients. (For a more extreme example, you might start by growing your grain and vegetables or raising the animal you use for meat.)

A low-code version would be buying a can of soup as an ingredient in a casserole or purchasing a boxed mix to bake bread in a "just add water"-style product.

One might have a tastier or more customized meal than the other, but many people might not care about the difference.

You don't always need to reinvent the wheel. When you want to develop an application, should you code a button from scratch or use a code snippet someone else made that includes all of the button's functionality, and you tie it to the action you want to have to happen when the button is pressed?

Low-code development can happen by using code snippets or using tools or platforms that have the functionality built into them. You might use a tool to build an application or webpage without ever looking at code directly. You might still need to interact with code to make the elements work together and code your functionality around them.

What Are the Benefits of Low-Code Development?

Low-code development comes in several forms, but they all share more or less the same array of benefits, with more emphasis on some over others depending on the angle. So, what are those benefits?

It can dramatically speed up how quickly you can develop a product.

At the barest minimum, typing in code takes time compared to copying and pasting the same code from another source or dragging and dropping a module that has that code in the back end in a visual editor.

Depending on how widespread the modules and functionality you're looking to use are, you might be able to make an entire app using nothing more than pre-existing code snippets.

In other cases, you might need to use manual coding for some features, but do most of your framework and elements using pre-developed modules and snippets.

Some estimates place the speed of low-code development at as much as 10x faster than traditional high-code development processes. Between templates, feature modules, and standardization, a business can bring a new idea to market significantly more quickly.

This process also facilitates a more agile and responsive business. You can, for example, combine a low-code development process with a 

This strategy allows you to build a small, functional app, test it with an audience, receive feedback, and make changes in a shorter time than it would take to develop the MVP in a traditional high-code environment.

It helps minimize the incidence of errors and bug-fixing.

Copying and pasting (or using a module or template in a visual interface, which is practically the same) is a lossless code transfer. Even if you were to re-type the code manually, you might make errors.

Developing a helpful code snippet from scratch is even more prone to errors, both manual typo variety, and tactical functionality variety. There might be anything from a misplaced semicolon to an unexpected behavior you didn't plan for.

When using a code snippet, someone else (or many others) has already thought of, tested, improved, optimized, and expanded that module. It does what it needs to do, with whatever failsafe or backups it needs, and it works consistently every time.

Many development platforms use large libraries of modules, all of which work consistently and are tested to work together without bugs or errors. Some more expansive environments may leave more room open for issues you would need to troubleshoot or bugfix, but even that is much less of a burden than engineering everything from scratch.

It lowers the barrier to entry for your development team.

Depending on your choice of environment, developers can be both expensive and hard to find. Suppose you need an expert with years of experience in a particular language, framework, or background. In that case, they may be hard to find as they are in high demand and command a high salary due to the rarity of their skills.

When using a low-code development platform, you dramatically lower entry barriers. Your developers don't need to have exacting, specific knowledge of the code; they need to understand the core principles and functionality of programming in the environment. You can have developers who virtually never interact with code directly, and they will still be perfectly adequate developers.

Since the skill floor is lower, the base salary for your development team is too. You save money and can hire more people to work on the application from different angles simultaneously. You also save money on the speed of development, as mentioned above.

You have tighter integration with the user experience design.

Part of developing a new app, program, or website is the user experience. In traditional development, your coders might not have much experience with UX design, so you need to hire people with specific knowledge of user experience to change and optimize or skin the program from scratch.

Conversely, when you're working in a low-code environment, most modules will include the functionality and a template of how it can look. They might have skins you can assign, or you might easily code them to use CSS in an intuitive or centralized way. They may also have a tool designed for you to edit directly in a WYSIWYG style, again without touching the code directly.

All of this results in not just a faster development cycle but better-looking beta apps and trial versions in your MVP.

It can facilitate cross-platform accessibility.

Many low-code platforms can export a finished project in a form that works on multiple devices or ecosystems. In the case of web apps, they will function on any device – PC, Mac, mobile – that can access the internet. For more traditional apps and software, often, these low-code environments enable you to export versions for multiple platforms, using alternative versions of modules and code snippets.

In traditional development, if you want to have a PC version of an app, a Mac version, an iOS version, and an Android version, you'll need to make it web-based, or you'll need to make 

of 3-4 different versions of the app. You'll need these variations because each different environment uses different kinds of code, different dependencies and libraries, and different arrays of available functionality. In many cases, the features available in one ecosystem won't be usable in another.

Are There Drawbacks to Low-Code Platforms?

While these advantages are very potent, don't fall for the hype of thinking that low-code environments are universally better for development.

There are several noteworthy drawbacks to using low-code platforms or systems as well.

"Low-code isn't the future of code. It certainly has a place in the future and will be leveraged to make many applications. It will not replace other ways of creating software because low-code breaks down when the solution's complexity increases. We saw the same thing with Visual Basic in the '90s. VB was valuable, and a lot of software was written in VB. In the end, it was the complexity required by some applications that caused VB to break down and no longer be a good solution. Low code will be the same." – Thomas Stiehm, CTO of Coveros, via 

You may be constrained to just what the platform allows, limiting your functionality.

One of the most significant drawbacks to low-code development is the same as one of its best features: constrained functionality.

The use of code modules and drag-and-drop editors means it's easy to throw together something that works in a minimal amount of time. This process is incredibly beneficial for agile development and MVP modalities, but it falters when you want to do something that the platform doesn't support.

You can use custom code to create your new module for the feature you need. This strategy is slower, requires manual coding, and may not be possible on some platforms.

You can strip the feature out and not make it. This strategy limits the functionality of your final product and, if the feature was critical enough, can kill off an app idea.

You can migrate to another environment, potentially a different low-code platform or a high-code environment.

None of these are great options when investing heavily in a low-code platform.

You may end up locked into a specific vendor or environment.

Many low-code platforms use a relatively standardized set of code or a core language shared across other platforms and high-code development. However, that's not true of all of them. Moreover, some will only allow you to export finished products and may make it difficult (or, rarely, impossible) to export and transfer your base code to another system.

This means you often end up faced with a choice. Do you go low-code using code snippets and self-guided development, or do you use a platform that may lock you into their environment, implicitly or explicitly?

Neither is an excellent choice for many businesses.

When using a low-code environment, you have code snippets pre-generated and usable through an editor. You can leverage this to your advantage by hiring people who don't have as much direct technical expertise. However, this puts you in a sticky situation.

Does anyone in your development team know what the code does?

It's rare for the significant environments with many users because someone (somewhere) looks it over and analyzes it. However, especially in the more DIY low-code development processes using untested snippets found online, there can be potential problems with unknown code. You may run into an issue where the modules you're using have unexpected code, unintended features, or even security issues.

If no one knows what the code does intimately, you never know what kinds of problems can arise.

Should You Use a Low-Code Development Platform?

The answer to this question is a resounding "maybe." The truth is, a low-code environment can be great for:

Simple or small apps with constrained functionality.

Agile development of a proof of concept or minimum viable product.

However, as an app reaches maturity, complexity, logical burden, and uniqueness rear their heads.

The easier it is to make your app in a low-code environment, the less uniqueness and value your app will have when it's finished, and the easier it will be for someone else to copy it and invest slightly more to out-do you. It can, in that sense, become a detriment to use a low-code environment for final development.

Generally, a low-code platform is excellent for getting started, but at some point, you will want to transition to a high-code environment for finishing your project. However, if you have further questions, feel free to reach out to us to discuss them.

The Pros and Cons of Low-Code Development Platforms

You may have heard the term MVP tossed around in developing a new product or, especially, software. What does it mean? No, we're not talking about your Most Valuable Player, that rockstar developer who seems to do everything for everyone. That person's great, but that's not what MVP means in this context.

MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product. What does that mean? How does it work? 

The MVP is the Minimum Viable Product, but what does that mean? 

"Minimum Viable Product or MVP is a development technique in which a new product is introduced in the market with basic features, but enough to get the consumers' attention. The final product is released in the market only after getting sufficient feedback from the product's initial users." – 

There are a bunch of definitions out there, depending on where you look, but they all come back to the same core concept.

"A minimum viable product, or MVP, is a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle. In industries such as software, the MVP can help the product team receive user feedback as quickly as possible to iterate and improve the product." – 

MVP is part of Agile/Lean product development and was introduced by Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, a book about agile startup development.

"Eric Ries defined an MVP as that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. This validated learning comes in the form of whether your customers will actually purchase your product." – 

So, a minimum viable product is a product your startup develops with the bare minimum number of and level of features.

Take, for example, a video streaming service. A company like Netflix, Hulu, or Disney might bring a video streaming service to the web with a bare minimum set of features. There's no Wishlisting, and there's no queue; there's a very minimal library of media. All they're doing is providing a streaming service to verify that there's demand for streaming video. You can add all of those features later, and the media library can be expanded using funds and user numbers gained from the MVP.

An MVP has three key characteristics to it.

It provides a feedback loop to guide future development early enough to properly adjust investment before wasting time, effort, or money.

It demonstrates the potential for future benefit to retain early adopters, even if they are not satisfied with what they get out of the box.

It provides enough value that people are willing to invest immediately, whether as venture capital or early adopters.

If any of these three is missing, the product is not complete enough to be an MVP.

A vital component of the MVP model is feedback, used to iterate on the design. That feedback can come from various sources, including focus groups, customer interviews, polls, surveys, monitoring discussions on social media or Reddit, and even user behavior tracking with apps like heatmaps or session tracking. Any data source that can meaningfully inform a business decision can be used to optimize an MVP.

There are tangible benefits and drawbacks to the MVP approach.

The most significant benefit of the MVP approach is agility and low investment.

With an MVP, you don't spend thousands of dev-hours and tons of money on building and implementing features that you don't know whether or not they're going to be used or desired by your audience. Many MVPs are nothing more than a landing page or a demo video to build up interest and gain feedback. The company solicits user feedback, feature requests, and an estimate of demand to determine what the product should have and then builds it. In many cases, no product even exists when the MVP is promoted.

Dropbox is a primary example of this model in action. When Dropbox was little more than an idea, the founders created a pitch video of the concept and its benefits. There was no product, not yet, but they used the video to convince venture capital to fund their business and used that capital to build it. The rest is, of course, history.

A secondary benefit of the MVP model is a speedy time to market. You can have an idea up and running in a matter of days or weeks, in some cases, and start getting feedback and building hype before other companies have even finished pitching the idea to the board that will present the concept to the decision-makers responsible for showing the idea to the directors who can green-light it.

Another excellent benefit of an MVP is to avoid investing in off-target features or products. If you come up with a great idea and build an MVP, only to find that no one cares and no one wants it, you can cut it off before ever spending another dollar on developing it.

This strategy contrasts the previous way of building products, where you would engineer the entire thing, and the consumer base would take it or leave it. If they chose to leave it, well, you would spend a considerable part of your subsequent investment (to justify the existing sunk costs) on marketing to find how to convince users they needed it.

MVPs can also help to avoid feature creep or scope creep. Many developers keep having more ideas to add to their product to make it better without paying attention to the added complexity or burden on users to learn how to use all of those features.

Moreover, scope creep costs money, time, and development energy, which can delay the full release, potentially even indefinitely. The video game Star Citizen is a primary example of this; with newly announced features often hyped and quietly canceled, the game has been in development for an entire decade and still has not achieved even a fraction of what it promised over the years.

There are several key drawbacks to the MVP approach.

The first is that many people don't quite understand it. They see "minimum" and make the bare minimum product they can, but they neglect the "viable" part of the acronym. Thus, what they bring to market is barely anything, leaving the audience resoundingly ambivalent to it.

The goal of an MVP is to harvest information about demand. Thus, the product needs to have enough to analyze the market.

If there's not enough to the product, users can't give appropriate feedback, and the business learns nothing.

However, one of the most significant issues with MVP development is the time to market for the full version of the product. You develop an idea and put it out into the world to build hype, but critically, 

you don't yet have the product available. 

Other companies with faster development cycles can take that hype and that idea, develop their own, and launch it, sometimes even before you do.

This cycle often happens in mobile app development and physical prototypes for small items, such as popular listings on websites like Kickstarter. One of the most iconic examples is the Fidget Cube, a product that went viral on Kickstarter and built a ton of hype and then 

was beat to market by a competitor copying it

The MVP model can be highly beneficial if you successfully navigate these drawbacks. If not, well, there's a reason most startups fail.

There are many different "bring a scaled-back idea to market for a purpose" ideas and models. 

What's the difference between an MVP and these options?

A proof of concept is an initial construct, a version of the idea that proves that it can work at all.

It's one thing to build a pitch deck of ideas, and it's quite another to create something to prove that you can bring those ideas into reality. We could quickly produce a video pitching a perpetual energy device, but we couldn't build it because it would violate the laws of physics. There's no way to bring that PoC into an MVP.

A proof of concept is essential to proving that you can build something and that your core idea works. A PoC doesn't need to be deeply functional, nuanced, or even look good; that's all polish you iterate on to make an actual MVP.

A prototype is somewhere between a proof of concept and an MVP. It's a version of the product you design to showcase how it works. This prototype is often your wireframe for software, a clickable, navigable version that starts to show the "flow" of how the product will work.

Prototypes are meant to be iterated, not simply refined. They're also intended to be usable enough to identify any significant roadblocks a user might encounter, points of failure you might not have noticed or thought about. Depending on feedback, you might go through dozens of prototypes, or you might hit on the core features properly in the first handful.

The MMP is the Minimum Marketable Product and is more advanced than the MVP. The MVP is there to build hype in the concept, research the market viability, and gain feedback to iterate on the idea; the MMP exists to be sold. It's the bare minimum that can be considered a "complete" product, even if you plan to add more features later. It's the 1.0 release, not the beta release, nor the alpha release.

Since the popularity of the MVP model arose, entrepreneurs have been iterating on it to see if they can come up with something to coin and cement their legacies. 

So, you see other models on the market, such as:

, the Minimum Lovable Product. This model doesn't focus on a product that people will tolerate as a starting point, but rather a product with enough to make people love it and become loyal to it and its brand.

 is about finding something that doesn't build an MVP in an existing paradigm but changes the paradigm itself. It creates such a reality-warping black hole of interest that potential customers can't help but fall into it. Something like Facebook or Amazon, which changed the face of how the internet and society works, were black holes.

. Like the Wizard, this model has a "man behind the curtain." Typically, this comes up with "AI" and "Machine Learning" apps that just have 

 human workforces behind them. The goal is to get the concept up and running and invest in the real AI in the back end afterward.

There are a lot of variances out there, and pretty much every model works for someone, somewhere.

If you have an idea you want to bring to market, you have a lot of flexibility on how you want to do so.

The MVP model is practical for an agile, responsive business, but it's just one of many different models with different starting points and different steps along the way.

Of course not. There's no such thing as a "best" way of doing business.

If you want to bring your idea to life, reach out and contact us today. We're here to help you figure out just how to build it, what technology to use, what model will work best for your goals, and, of course, we do the legwork too. All you need to do is 

What's an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and How Do They Work?

The world of technology is a pulsing cycle. You'll have a period of expansion, where new technology is developed, and multiple different spin-offs, iterations, and variations appear until the market seems saturated with options. It becomes challenging to know which to pick. Then, as that technology ages, the expansion begins with the next iteration. Next, as people gain experience using these options and comparing them, some become the clear winners. Some will fold, some will be purchased and rolled into others, and the market consolidates with the most effective options.

We're in the middle of this cycle with development. Right now, there are three clear favorites for the core technology everyone uses for their web app development. 

Those three are the front-end frameworks of Vue, Angular, and React.

All three of these frameworks are iterations on JavaScript, and they all work in slightly different ways, but they're all compelling and can all be used to make well-functioning apps.

You can split an app's functionality between the front-end and back-end in development. Front-end is the stuff a user sees and interacts with - it's your dashboard, newsfeed, user profile, etc. The back end is the server-side databases and infrastructure that hosts and runs the front-end code. Angular, Vue and React are all frameworks for front-end development.

Front-end frameworks are like shortcuts and cheat sheets. You could code up an entire front end in JavaScript, raw. After all, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS combined are present virtually everywhere on the internet.

In a way, you can think of it as a recipe. Imagine you want to make a pizza. You're given wheat and a millstone, meat and casings, spices, seeds; you have to grind your flour, make your sausage, grow your vegetables. It's a ton of work to make a pizza that is likely to be delicious, though you'll probably encounter missteps along the way.

Now imagine you're making that same pizza, but you're given pizza dough, pepperoni, and vegetables. You still have to prepare the ingredients, but it's much faster to assemble. And while the from-scratch pizza might be tastier, it also has a lot more points of failure along the way.

This process is the difference between using a framework and not using one. 

Not using a framework takes more time and has more places it can go wrong

, and while you may be able to produce a faster, more effective result than you would with a framework, it will take a lot more work to do, and there's always the chance that you won't. Indeed, most users won't even notice the difference.

It's no wonder that frameworks are so popular.

All three frameworks – Angular, React, and Vue – are similar in that they're essentially 

. They're packages of dough, sauce, cheese, veggies, and so on, everything you need to make a pizza. The difference is one of them might give you dough and sauce while another gives you the ingredients to make the dough, or one might give you a specific selection of toppings while another gives you a different set of choices.

It's those differences that are important when choosing a framework. So, what are they? React is a library of UI elements, Vue is a progressive framework, and Angular is a complete front-end framework. What does all that mean?

The structure of the three frameworks varies significantly.

 is a library of elements and building blocks. It doesn't enforce structure (and is thus not technically even a framework, but since it's used in more or less the same way, we're keeping it in the comparison), so it's very flexible. You can think of it kind of like having a giant pile of Lego bricks to play with. You don't have to engineer a wheel when the wheel is right there to use, but you do have to build the car.

 is also technically not a traditional framework because it focuses solely on the view layer of app development. It's made to allow you to develop small, individual components per your specifications. A single Vue element can be a module of HTML and CSS that works the same way and can be re-used throughout your code. Vue can also be extended using official and unofficial expansion packages, like Vue Router, to be more like a traditional framework.

 is a more traditional framework. It allows you to build components from a combination of a template, a class (that defines how the module functions), and metadata that specifies how it looks and acts. You define the components; then you create services to use those components to develop the front end you're designing.

Each of the three frameworks has a distinct origin. 

However, they're all interlinked due to all being part of the same overall environment (the internet), and developers all talk to each other and socialize.

 was developed in 2010 by Google. However, what we think of as Angular today is now called Angular 2. Angular 1, currently called AngularJS, was deprecated in 2016. Most people, when talking about Angular, are referring to Angular 2. Or, well, Angular 13 (the most recent stable release) or whatever it's up to now.

 came out in 2013 and was developed by Facebook, primarily to power their architecture and content (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and all their components) but was released for public use as a framework anyone could use.

 is the youngest of the lot by a year. It was developed by an ex-Google employee and released in 2014, just a year after React. In a way, it's sort of like the indie offering trying to compete in the space dominated by Facebook and Google and is supported by a Patreon and independent funding.

All three frameworks are open source under the MIT license. If you're curious what that means, you can read a summary here.

It can be challenging to determine how popular each framework is. The most common way of estimating it is by looking at the number of stars the framework has on Github. As of this writing, they are:

While this seems dramatically lower, remember that Angular was forked; AngularJS has 60k stars of its own. Both are still in active use and are maintained, though they have fewer stars than their competitors even combined.

Of course, they're all popular enough to have significant communities, plenty of ongoing support, and a broad ecosystem of tools you can use to expand functionality or make it easier to develop in the framework.

Starting with Angular, let's talk about the pros and cons of using each framework.

 Angular divides your front end into a model, a view, and a controller, with a firm set of best practices for each component. This framework allows you to develop well-structured code and makes it easier to troubleshoot, edit, and fix.

Angular uses HTML for most of its templates, making them easy to read, code, and edit as necessary.

 This data structure gets into the weeds with technical details we don't need to get into here. Suffice it to say that it's a practical and fast-operating structure for small and simple applications. However, it might falter or slow down operations compared to one-way data binding on more extensive and complex apps.

 Angular is one of the more popular frameworks out there. There are many additional structures and tools, features, pre-made modules, and templates you can use as developed and supported by the community. You can also most assuredly find assistance with any problem you're having somewhere in one of their large community hubs.

Shadow DOMs are a way to encapsulate sub-elements of DOMs (don't worry if you don't quite get this) that, to simplify, basically means that you can use a template that would have CSS applied equally across every usage and segment off particular sub-uses of it to have their styling. It's a great way to use a template/module-based framework without the drawback of needing versatile styling for templates. Angular supports it but doesn't use it by default, so you need to emulate it.

 Typescript is a Microsoft-developed spin-off of JavaScript, with differences in syntax and support beyond what JavaScript can do. If you're familiar with JavaScript, you can still use Angular, but you're limiting yourself. You'll need to learn Typescript to use Angular's features fully.

 Angular re-renders entire DOMs when they change, which is slower than the virtual DOM element rendering that other frameworks support.

 Virtual DOMs, as mentioned above, are a way that the framework emulates DOMs without formalizing them. This process allows React apps to change the contents of a given DOM without having to re-render the entire DOM, which is much faster and less resource-intensive for apps that change frequently.

Since React uses pure functions rather than components, you can create a simplified codebase. This feature is especially relevant if you want to, say, use a single element from a complex component. In Angular, you can't use that function in React.

Much like Angular, React is extremely popular and is well-supported by the community.

Con: You need another tech framework to use it. 

Since React is a library and not a complete framework, you generally still need to use other libraries and components to make a fully-robust app.

 JSX is a sort of hybrid of JavaScript and XML. Angular uses Typescript, and React uses JSX. Again, to get the most out of the framework, you'll need to learn a spin-off of JavaScript.

React is flexible and requires you to develop your app structure from the ground up. It also requires you to discover other tools and modules to make something practical. It's a steep learning curve.

Alright, how does Vue stand up to the other two?

 Just like Angular, Vue uses the MVC structure, allowing you to create well-defined and well-structured code from the outset.

 Vue is a single framework you load just like Angular, but it's smaller and lighter-weight than Angular. Of course, this can also be a con because you need to add additional modules and scripts if you want to expand its functionality.

 Unlike the other two, you don't need to learn a weird spin-off of JavaScript to use the framework. All you need is that JS knowledge.

 The learning curve for Vue is much shallower than the other two, so it's a lot easier to pick up and run with.

Vue is the newcomer and doesn't have megacorp backing, so the community is smaller. That said, it's still just JavaScript, so there's still a ton of support out there, and you are still highly likely to be able to find a good community.

 Vue is extremely popular in China, so many third-party modules you might want to pick up and use are developed, supported, and only documented in Chinese. Reading and understanding the documentation can be frustrating if you don't know Chinese.

There's no precise answer to this question. All three frameworks are popular and valuable in unique ways, so it all comes down to what you want to do and how you want to do it. 

To thoroughly discuss that, why not give us a call? We're the experts on making your ideas into fully-realized apps, and we can help you figure out what direction to take your project.

Comparing Front-end Frameworks: React vs Vue vs Angular

Next.js is a framework for React, and since its initial release five years ago, it has swiftly become one of the most prominent and most-used platforms for app development. It's flexible without being too open-ended, it's easy to learn, and it's designed to work for both server-side and client-side design. There's no wonder that it's among the most widely-used platforms available today.

Not too long ago, we wrote up a rundown of 

the differences between Create-React-App and Next.js

, but it can be tricky to visualize all of that in the abstract. What can Next.js be used for in the real world? Check out these examples of apps made with Next.js.

Regardless of how you feel about cryptocurrencies in general, you can't deny that CoinMarketCap is one of the foremost authorities on all things crypto.

Next.js is great for building a site with static site elements and dynamically-filled data while maintaining a speedy load time. CoinMarketCap loads exceptionally quickly and populates fields with data ranging from coin values to trending coins to a feed of recent video content created by coiners.

The site also uses React (obviously; Next.js is a framework for React) and Node.js for its server-side code. You can see how the combination of technologies gives it a speedy loading time and very responsive design, even though it's drawing in dozens or hundreds of data points from its servers with every page load.

You can change language or currency, even enable/disable dark mode with the click of a button, and watch the page adjust in real-time; no need for a full reload. That's the power of Next.js. For added features, check out the top corner.

TailwindCSS provides a website builder/designer powered primarily with CSS. It's essentially a framework and engine for creating, deploying, maintaining, and building CSS to beautify and design a website. It doesn't do anything CSS doesn't normally do, but it provides a framework and tool to allow you to build it without the hassle of doing everything manually.

Just check out their website for various "live" demos showcasing what it can do.

While we could go on about all of the cool features of TailwindCSS, that's not the point. The point is to examine their website. See how fast it loads? See how easily elements can adapt to changes you make with the click of a button, whether it's part of one of their demos or the toggle between light and dark mode at the top? Those are features of Next.js built into their design.

TailwindCSS is great because it can also use with Next.js to design your own website. They've categorized and optimized CSS uniquely and interestingly, making it much easier to use, easier to implement, and faster than most of the alternatives, including just manually coding CSS.

Next.js is a small, agile, and easy-to-use framework. These features make it perfect for creating quick, small projects, which is why you see it as the basis for a massive array of small-scale sites and proof of concept ideas.

That doesn't mean it's only used by small sites, however.

The truth is, Next.js is used by some of the largest websites in the world, too.

One of the most significant advantages of Next.js is building a static page to hold dynamic data. You know, the front page always looks the same but is populated with various data streams, which change depending on when you load it, even throughout the day.

IMDb is one such site that exemplifies this design. Their pages are all static but populated with the relevant data, whether it's the video stream on the front page or the static information about a movie in individual film records. It even maintains a user's browsing history and shows you dynamically-populated data customized just for you. Imagine trying to do that with plain old web dev!

Starbucks is another billion-dollar company using Next.js for its site design. In this case, you can see that the Starbucks homepage is very light on elements. It's essentially just a stack of large-format CTAs for things like their menus, their rewards card, and their partnership with food delivery.

Where things get more complicated and interesting is in 

. Starbucks Stories feature everything from individual employee tales to the company's efforts to preserve the environment and the communities they join. You may or may not be skeptical about the truth of their efforts – they are, after all, a billion-dollar company – but they will certainly let you explore their efforts with a quick, reactive Next.js implementation.

One of the tell-tale signs a site is using Next.js is when you click between sub-pages or elements, and the page loads quickly or immediately. At the same time, it takes a very slight moment – fractions of a second, but just barely enough to notice – for the dynamic data to load in. You can see this on Starbucks if you tab between sub-sections.

Who doesn't know Hulu by now? Next.js power the video giant and Netflix competitor.

After all, if you think about it, what better use case for something like Next.js? You want a framework that allows for easily-generated, static, fast-loading pages. You want the ability to dynamically adjust and load in server-side data without requiring a full page reload. A framework page with data about a media piece, plus a dynamic element to display the video data and the video itself? That's a perfect use case for Next.js implementation.

Hulu isn't alone, either. Netflix also uses Next.js for the same set of reasons. Both of them are pretty similar in design and infrastructure when you get right down to it, so it's no surprise they run on the same architecture.

Many people assume that it's a massive overhead cost and a considerable expense to run a site and service like Netflix or Hulu. They're right, but it's not because of the web design itself. The site's actual design itself doesn't need to be expensive or run on expensive architecture. Instead, it's because of the sheer cost of the servers required to store the video files and the bandwidth necessary to serve millions of people at a time.

You might have noticed something about the sites listed above. All of them showcase dynamic data from a server on a static client page, but they all do so in primarily grid-and-table-based formats. It's easy to do that. Populating a table or loading a grid of images is the most straightforward web design to accomplish.

What about something a little more complicated? Something that doesn't align nicely to a grid? Something like, say, national borders?

Take a world map, with all of the countries delineated, and then make each nation a dynamic source of information. That's what WorldPopulationReview does, at least at the top of their page. Their interactive map lets you see the population numbers for any country you can highlight with your cursor.

Moreover, any element you click on will let you drill down to that element and see even more data about it, from tables to charts to graphs, all nicely presented and loading near-instantly.

Next.js is an excellent framework to use when you have a lot of heavy, complicated data that can display in a compelling and visually-distinct way. A lot of this data isn't necessarily easy to parse at a glance if it's presented as a plain old table, after all.

Critically, of course, all the site has to do to update their page is update whatever data sources they pull from. Since much of the data comes from third parties, they barely need to do that. Everything populates and updates automatically.

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