Hello and welcome to the Hardcover tech update. Today we’re diving into Part 1 of the Alexandria release, where the team explains how “we fell out of love with Next.js and back in love with Ruby on Rails & Inertia.js.” The story begins in 2021, when Next.js 9.5 arrived with SSR and incremental static regeneration—it “sounded perfect.” But over three years, unpredictable serverless costs ballooned monthly bills by ten times, caching remained unclear, and local development grew painfully slow. By August 2024 the team faced steep hosting bills and crippling compile times. Their solution? Ruby on Rails, where “this decade (+) old feature of Rails still feels like magic”—Rails.cache.fetch—for instant server-side caching, paired with Inertia.js for seamless React front-ends without sacrificing SEO. Since launching on March 18, 2025, Google PageSpeed scores have soared, visit durations nearly doubled, and infrastructure costs have dropped. Next up: moving from the cloud to a dedicated server with DigitalOcean and Kamal. Stay tuned for Part 2!
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