But its not two "completely separate ways"? Your data management code is not completely different at all. If you want to, do it all in your API and next.js just calls through to it. And then call fetch in your components to the same API you would in a normal client app. The only difference is now those fetch calls happen on a server in RSC's or w/e rather than from the client directly.

I'm honestly not even arguing for the hype since I don't use Next.js myself for any production projects at this time, I was simply pointing out that its not as if choosing to use it automatically means you can't use an API which is what the grandparent makes it seem like with their rant about still needing an API.

There are some teams that truly do want a server rendered app that Next.js provides as well as other features. They can use it for that if they so choose.

I'm honestly not even arguing RSC's are better or not because I know there are tradeoffs on both ends and we don't use them ourselves at where I work. Like I said, I was just poiting out it isn't a simple one or the other.

There are plenty of teams out there that use a backend for frontend architecture that basically is a data transformation layer for their API to clients. For your web stack that could be next.js.