This is pretty fascinating and comes with some complicated AI-world incentives that I've been ruminating on lately. The better you document your work, the stronger contracts you define, the easier it is for someone to clone your work. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing open source commercial work bend towards the SQLite model (open core, private tests). There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests.

Speaking more about the framework itself, the only real conclusion I have here is that I feel server components are a misunderstood and under-utilized pattern and anyone attempting to simplify their DX is a win in my book.

Next is very complex, largely because it has incrementally grown and kept somewhat backwards compatible. A framework that starts from the current API surface and grows can be more malleable and make some tough decisions here at the outset.

Crazy to see it's already being run on a .gov domain[0]. TTFGOV as a new adoption metric?

[0] https://www.cio.gov/

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anematode 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The better you document your work, the stronger contracts you define, the easier it is for someone to clone your work.

Well said; this is my thinking as well. One person or organization can do the hard work of testing multiple approaches to the API, establishing and revising best practices, and developing an ecosystem. Then once things are fairly stable and well-understood, another person can just yoink it.

I have little empathy for Vercel, and here they're kind of being hoist by their own petard of inducing frustration in people who don't use their hosting; but I'm concerned about how smaller-scale projects (including copyleft ones) will be laundered and extinguished.

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falcor84 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests.

I'm very uncovinced. History showed us very complex systems reverse engineered without access to the source code. With access to the source code, coupled with the rapid iteration of AI, I don't see any real moat here; at best a slight delay.

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seddonm1 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have tried to post this here but it has not got traction.

I have a demonstrated process here on my blog (all hand written without AI).

This bit about how to brute force decompilation: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

And this about how to do the conversion and address the LLM hallucination problem: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

Yes, it is absolutely possible.

	▲	igravious 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There was a recent post on here where the creator of Ladybird (Andreas Kling) translated a chunk of his novel browser from c++ to Rust in two weeks -- a feat he estimated would take him months: https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ I, in my own way, have discovered that recent versions of Claude are extremely (as in, super-humanly) good at rewriting or porting. Apparently if recently released coding agents have a predefined target and a good test suite then you can basically tell them that you want X (well-defined target w/ good suite of tests) written in Y (the language/framework you want X written in but it isn't) -- and a week or two later you have a working version. I have spent the last month wrapping my head around the idea that there is a class of tasks in software engineering that is now solved for not very much money at all. More or less every single aspirational idea I have ever had over the last 20 years or so I have begun emabarking on within the last two months. I hear you.

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anematode 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Source code is one thing; tests covering the codebase are another.

And if you just copy the source code or translate it one-to-one into a new language, rather than make a behavioral copy, there will be copyright issues.

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sealeck 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> there will be copyright issues

Next.js is MIT-licensed. Cloudflare's rewrite is... also MIT licensed...

	▲	anematode 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Of course. I'm referring to rewrites of other software; you can easily launder GPLed code this way, for example.

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root_axis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The tests are absolutely essential, otherwise there's no signal to guide the LLM towards correct behavior and hallucinations accumulate until any hope of forward progress collapses.

	▲	falcor84 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Obviously the signal is comparison against the behavior of the original.

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ctoth 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing open source commercial work bend towards the SQLite model (open core, private tests).

Wouldn't this just mean that actual open source is the tests? or spec? or ... The artifact which acts as seed for the program, what ever that ends up being?

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snowhale 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]