Web Dev
July 20269 min read
Debouncing and Throttling in React the Right Way
Why naive useEffect timers leak, how to build a reusable useDebounce hook, and how to clean up debounce and throttle on unmount in React.
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Blog
Web Development
Articles on Next.js, React, TypeScript, and modern web app architecture — performance, SEO, and real-world frontend engineering patterns.
64 articles
Web Dev
July 20269 min read
React Server Components vs Islands Architecture
Two architectures for shipping less JavaScript — RSC's server-render boundary versus the islands model in Astro and Qwik — and how to choose.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
TanStack Router: Fully Type-Safe Routing in React
How TanStack Router gives you typed params, validated search state, and route loaders — and why file-based routing beats hand-wiring the tree.
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Web Dev
July 20268 min read
Valibot vs Zod: Bundle Size and Tree-Shaking
Valibot ships a schema in about 1.3 kB while Zod carries roughly 13 kB — here is why the modular pipe design tree-shakes and Zod's method chaining does not.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
Web Workers in React: Offload the Main Thread with Comlink
Heavy CPU work freezes React at 0fps. Here is how I move it to a Web Worker with Comlink, when a worker beats a server call, and how to hold 60fps.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
What Changed in Zod 4: Performance, Mini, and Migration
Zod 4 rewrote the validation core for speed, added a 1.9 KB tree-shakable mini build, and reshaped error handling — here is what changed and how to migrate.
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Web Dev
July 20268 min read
Dynamic Open Graph Images with Next.js ImageResponse
How to generate a unique Open Graph image for every blog post at request time using Next.js ImageResponse and Satori, without shipping a design tool.
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Web Dev
July 20268 min read
Type-Safe Forms with React Hook Form and Zod
How to wire React Hook Form to a Zod resolver, share one schema between client and server, and get clean, type-safe error handling for free.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
Zustand vs Redux Toolkit: Choosing React State in 2026
An honest comparison of Zustand and Redux Toolkit for React apps in 2026 - boilerplate, devtools, bundle size, and why server state usually belongs in TanStack Query instead of either one.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
Streaming and Suspense in Next.js: Loading UI That Feels Fast
Use streaming SSR and React Suspense in Next.js to ship pages that feel instant, with loading.tsx, granular boundaries, and parallel data fetching that kills request waterfalls.
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Web Dev
July 202610 min read
Optimizing INP: The Core Web Vital That Replaced FID
A field guide to fixing Interaction to Next Paint by breaking up long tasks, yielding to the main thread, and measuring real-user responsiveness.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
shadcn/ui: Copy-Paste Components as an Architecture
Why the shadcn/ui own-your-code model beats a component dependency, and how Radix primitives plus Tailwind tokens scale into a real design system.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
TanStack Query in the Next.js App Router: Prefetch and Hydrate
Combine TanStack Query with React Server Components: prefetch on the server, hydrate on the client, and stop shipping duplicate requests.
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Web Dev
July 202610 min read
React 19 use() and Actions: The New Async Model
A practical tour of React 19's use() hook and Actions: how useActionState and useOptimistic replace manual loading, error, and pending state boilerplate.
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Web Dev
July 20269 min read
Server-Sent Events in Next.js: Simpler Than WebSockets
Most real-time features only push data one way. Here is when Server-Sent Events beat WebSockets in Next.js, and how to stream them from a route handler.
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Web Dev
July 202610 min read
Next.js Partial Prerendering: Static Shell, Dynamic Holes
Partial Prerendering lets a single route ship a prebuilt static shell instantly while personalized, request-time content streams into Suspense boundaries in parallel.
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Web Dev
May 202610 min read
Technical SEO for Developers: Canonical, hreflang, JSON-LD
A developer's technical SEO checklist from shipping a bilingual Next.js site: canonical strategy, bidirectional hreflang, structured data, and sitemaps that work.
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Web Dev
April 202610 min read
What next/image Actually Does: srcset, AVIF, and the Cache
Inside the next/image pipeline: how srcset gets generated, how AVIF and WebP are negotiated, where the optimizer cache lives, and the misuse that wastes it all.
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Web Dev
April 20269 min read
Design Tokens with Tailwind: A Theme That Survives a Rebrand
How to build a color, spacing, and typography token system in Tailwind v4 that turns a full rebrand into a one-line change instead of a two-week grep.
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Web Dev
April 20269 min read
Self-Hosting Web Fonts for Performance: next/font Done Right
FOUT, FOIT, subsetting, variable fonts and what next/font really does under the hood — a practical guide to making web fonts fast instead of a render tax.
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Web Dev
April 202610 min read
React Server Components: The Mental Model That Finally Clicks
What actually runs where in React Server Components: the module-graph boundary, the serialization wall, and a four-step rule for when to add use client.
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Web Dev
April 20269 min read
Next.js Server Actions in Production: Forms, Validation, Security
Server Actions kill API-route boilerplate, but they are public POST endpoints. My production playbook for forms, Zod validation, and the security footguns.
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Web Dev
July 20259 min read
Building a Production Landing Page That Scores 100 on Core Web Vitals
A practical guide to achieving perfect Lighthouse scores on a Next.js landing page — from LCP to CLS to INP.
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Web Dev
October 202510 min read
TypeScript Project Structure for Real-World Apps: What Actually Works
Beyond the tutorials: a battle-tested folder structure and tsconfig setup for TypeScript projects that scale without becoming a maze.
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Web Dev
December 20259 min read
My Figma to Next.js Component Workflow
How I translate Figma designs into production-ready Next.js components without losing fidelity or wasting time on guesswork.
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Web Dev
February 202610 min read
Next.js i18n with next-intl: A Complete Guide From Someone Who Actually Uses It
A first-hand guide to setting up next-intl in a Next.js App Router project — covering routing, server components, client components, and the gotchas I hit in production.
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Web Dev
June 20259 min read
Scalable Next.js Project Structure with App Router
A battle-tested folder structure for Next.js 15 App Router projects that scales from side project to production SaaS.
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Web Dev
September 202511 min read
How to Build a SaaS in 30 Days with Next.js and Tailwind
A realistic day-by-day roadmap for solo developers to ship a working SaaS product with auth, payments, and email in one month.
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Web Dev
November 202510 min read
Building Type-Safe REST APIs with NestJS and Prisma
How to wire NestJS, Prisma, and class-validator together so TypeScript type errors catch bugs before they reach production.
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Web Dev
January 20269 min read
SEO-First Next.js: The Complete Checklist for 2026
A practical checklist covering Next.js Metadata API, Core Web Vitals, JSON-LD structured data, sitemaps, and i18n SEO in one place.
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Web Dev
March 20268 min read
React Query vs SWR: Which to Use in 2026
A side-by-side comparison of TanStack Query and SWR for data fetching in Next.js — with real code examples for mutations, caching, and SSR.
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Web Dev
January 20259 min read
Real User Monitoring: Why Lab Data Lies and Field Data Wins
How RUM gives you the actual performance numbers your users experience — and why Lighthouse scores alone are misleading.
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Web Dev
February 202510 min read
Image Optimization in Next.js: WebP, AVIF, and the Settings I Actually Ship
A practical guide to Next.js image optimization — the formats, the config, and the real-world results from optimizing matthewswong.com.
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Web Dev
March 202511 min read
Next.js Caching in 2025: ISR, SSR, and When to Use Each
A decision framework for choosing between ISR, SSR, and SSG in Next.js App Router — with real performance numbers and the configs I ship.
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Web Dev
April 202510 min read
Database Connection Pooling in NestJS: PgBouncer and Why You Need It
How connection pooling works, why your NestJS app will eventually exhaust PostgreSQL connections, and the PgBouncer config I run in production.
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Web Dev
May 202511 min read
PostgreSQL Full-Text Search Without Elasticsearch: What I Use in ERP Projects
How tsvector and GIN indexes make PostgreSQL a capable search engine for small-to-medium datasets — and when you actually need Elasticsearch.
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Web Dev
June 202510 min read
Cursor vs Offset Pagination: The 17x Performance Gap at Scale
Why offset pagination falls apart on large datasets and how to implement cursor pagination in a NestJS API that stays fast at any page depth.
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Web Dev
July 20259 min read
API Versioning in NestJS: The Strategy I Actually Ship
How to implement URI-based API versioning in NestJS without breaking existing clients — with the controller patterns and migration strategy I use.
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Web Dev
August 202510 min read
GraphQL vs REST in 2025: Which One for Your Next Project?
An honest comparison of GraphQL and REST — adoption data, performance benchmarks, and the framework I use to choose between them.
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Web Dev
September 20259 min read
OpenAPI and Swagger in NestJS: Auto-Generated Docs That Stay Accurate
How to set up @nestjs/swagger so your API documentation is generated from code and never goes stale — with the decorator patterns I use.
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Web Dev
October 20259 min read
Environment Variables and Secrets in Next.js: What Goes Wrong and How to Fix It
The rules for NEXT_PUBLIC_ vs server-only variables, how to validate at startup, and the secrets management setup I use in production.
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Web Dev
November 202510 min read
E2E Testing Next.js Apps with Playwright: Setup, Patterns, and CI Integration
How to set up Playwright for a Next.js app, write tests that don't break on every deploy, and run them in GitHub Actions CI.
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Web Dev
December 202510 min read
Accessibility Audit for Next.js Apps: Automating WCAG Compliance
How to audit Next.js apps for accessibility issues using axe-core and Playwright — with the workflow that catches 57% of WCAG violations automatically.
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Web Dev
January 20269 min read
npm Dependency Management and Security Auditing: What I Actually Do
How to audit npm dependencies for vulnerabilities, manage update debt, and protect your project from supply chain attacks.
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Web Dev
February 202610 min read
Security Headers in Next.js: The Config I Actually Ship
The complete security headers configuration for Next.js — CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, and the nonce-based approach for inline scripts.
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Web Dev
March 20269 min read
Dark Mode in Next.js: System-Aware, Flicker-Free, and the Implementation I Ship
How to implement dark mode in Next.js with next-themes, avoid the dreaded flash of unstyled content, and persist user preferences correctly.
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Web Dev
December 202511 min read
Testing Next.js Apps with Vitest and Jest: A Practical Comparison
A data-driven comparison of Vitest and Jest for Next.js applications — with benchmarks, setup examples, and an honest guide to which testing framework you should choose in 2025.
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Web Dev
January 202610 min read
Storybook for Component Documentation: Building a Living Design System
How to use Storybook to document React components, create interactive showcases, and build a design system that stays in sync with your actual codebase.
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Web Dev
February 202510 min read
Next.js App Router Migration: Lessons from a Real Project
Hard-won lessons from migrating a production Next.js app from Pages Router to App Router — what breaks, what shines, and what I'd do differently.
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Web Dev
March 20258 min read
Tailwind CSS vs CSS Modules: Which Should You Use in 2025?
A pragmatic comparison of Tailwind CSS and CSS Modules — download stats, DX, performance, and when each approach actually wins.
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Web Dev
April 202510 min read
Prisma vs TypeORM in NestJS: Which ORM Should You Choose?
A production-tested comparison of Prisma and TypeORM for NestJS applications — type safety, migrations, developer experience, and real npm download data.
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Web Dev
May 20259 min read
NextAuth vs Clerk: Authentication in Next.js Apps in 2025
A real comparison of NextAuth.js and Clerk for Next.js authentication — pricing, DX, features, and when each makes sense for your project.
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Web Dev
June 202510 min read
WebSockets in NestJS: Building Real-Time Features in Production
A practical guide to WebSocket Gateways in NestJS with Socket.io — rooms, namespaces, Redis pub/sub for scaling, and JWT authentication.
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Web Dev
July 202510 min read
File Upload to S3 in Next.js: The Production Pattern
How to implement secure, scalable file uploads to AWS S3 from Next.js using presigned URLs — no files passing through your server.
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Web Dev
August 20258 min read
Resend vs Nodemailer: Transactional Email in 2025
A practical comparison of Resend and Nodemailer for transactional email — deliverability, developer experience, pricing, and when to use each.
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Web Dev
September 20259 min read
Next.js API Routes vs NestJS: Choosing Your Backend in 2025
A direct comparison of Next.js Route Handlers and NestJS for backend development — when each is the right tool based on real production experience.
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Web Dev
October 20259 min read
TypeScript Strict Mode in Production: Why It's Non-Negotiable
Why TypeScript strict mode belongs in every production codebase — the bugs it catches, the gotchas it surfaces, and how to enable it on a legacy project.
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Web Dev
November 202510 min read
React Server Components: When and How to Use Them in Next.js
A practical guide to React Server Components in Next.js 15 — what they actually change, when to use them, and the patterns that make them powerful.
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Web Dev
December 20259 min read
Next.js Middleware: Real Use Cases Beyond the Docs
Practical Next.js middleware patterns for authentication guards, i18n locale detection, A/B testing, and security headers — with code and gotchas.
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Web Dev
January 20269 min read
Framer Motion vs CSS Animations: When to Use Each
A practical comparison of Framer Motion and pure CSS animations — bundle size, performance, DX, and my real experience using both on matthewswong.com.
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Web Dev
February 202610 min read
Monorepo with Turborepo: Running Next.js and NestJS Together
How to set up a production-ready Turborepo monorepo with Next.js frontend, NestJS backend, and shared TypeScript packages.
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Web Dev
March 20269 min read
API Rate Limiting in NestJS with Redis: A Production Guide
How to implement distributed rate limiting in NestJS using @nestjs/throttler and Redis — protecting your API from abuse at any scale.
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Web Dev
April 20269 min read
Next.js Error Handling Patterns: From error.tsx to Production
A complete guide to error handling in Next.js App Router — error.tsx, not-found.tsx, global error boundaries, and patterns for production resilience.
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Web Dev
November 202512 min read
BPJS API Integration for Indonesian Developers: A Practical Guide
Integrating BPJS Ketenagakerjaan and BPJS Kesehatan APIs into Indonesian HR and payroll systems — authentication, endpoints, error handling, and the undocumented gotchas.
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