Windy City DevFest 2024
Google Chicago Office
The Superpowers and Kryptonite Brought by Next.js
A field report on building a cutting-edge digital marketing app and patient-appointment platform supporting 8M+ patients annually — where Next.js delivered, and where it bit back. The real triumphs and trials of running a high-performance commerce platform in production.
What you'll learn
- How server-side rendering lifts Core Web Vitals, SEO, and perceived performance.
- Why feature toggling makes rollouts safer and gives you control over what ships.
- Running OpenTelemetry observability outside of Vercel — and the prefetch & memory-leak pitfalls to watch for.
- Setting realistic expectations: Next.js is powerful, not a silver bullet.