Wouldn't say unnecesarry. Nextjs static export has features such as dynamic chunking, eager-loading of chunks when you hover over a link, routing etc. With a plugin you get image optimization (different image quality levels and dimensions based on viewport size) etc.
But yes, another static site blog generator would also work.
My experience with Next.js is that because it mixes multiple paradigms, it makes using any single one of them more complicated and error prone.
Not just as the dev delivering the solution, but also library and package authors.
Ran into lots of issues around Next 12, Next 13 was very buggy, moved to Astro and never looked back.
> Wouldn't say unnecesarry. Nextjs static export has features such as dynamic chunking, eager-loading of chunks when you hover over a link, routing etc.
As someone who's ran a blog for 25 years it's surprising I never knew these things were necessary until now.