Why using Nuxt.js?
The Moment We Realized Our 👶 Was Growing Up
Picture this: It's another late evening in our office, and I'm staring at a codebase that once felt like home. Our dashboard—our baby—the one we've nurtured since the very first day this company came to life, was starting to show its age.
You know that feeling when you realize your childhood home feels smaller than you remember? That's exactly how we felt about our jQuery and vanilla JavaScript foundation. What once felt magical and limitless now felt... constrained.
Our team was growing faster than we ever imagined. New features were rolling out almost monthly, and with each release, I could see the strain in my teammates' eyes. The late-night debugging sessions were getting longer, the "quick fixes" were taking hours, and worst of all—that spark of joy we once had while coding was slowly dimming.
The Weight of Legacy
I'll be honest with you—admitting that our legacy dashboard was holding us back was one of the hardest professional moments I've faced. This wasn't just code; it was our identity, our foundation, our proof that we could build something meaningful from scratch.
But love sometimes means letting go, right?
The jQuery and vanilla JavaScript that had served us so well were now becoming roadblocks. Every new team member needed weeks just to understand our custom patterns. Every modern library integration felt like forcing a square peg into a round hole. We were spending more time fighting our tools than creating value for our users.
And our users... they deserved better. They deserved the fast, smooth, delightful experience that modern web technologies could provide.
The Search for Our New Foundation
What followed was probably the most intense research phase of our careers. This wasn't just about picking a framework—this was about choosing the future of our company, our team's happiness, and our users' experience.
We dove deep into the trenches of React, Angular, and Vue.js. I remember the countless nights scrolling through documentation, watching tutorials, and having heated (but loving) debates with my team about the pros and cons of each approach.
The meta-frameworks were our next challenge: Next.js, Nuxt.js, Angular Universal, and even SvelteKit. Each had its own personality, its own promises, its own learning curve.
This was before the ChatGPT era, so every piece of knowledge was hard-earned through blog posts, Stack Overflow deep-dives, and GitHub issue discussions. We were digital archaeologists, uncovering the truth about each technology through real-world experiences shared by developers around the globe.
After weeks of research that felt like months, something clicked when we experimented with Nuxt.js for our help page at https://help.kiriminaja.com. The developer experience felt... right. It felt like coming home to a house that was both familiar and excitingly new.
Why Nuxt.js Stole Our Hearts
Here's why Nuxt.js didn't just win our minds—it won our hearts:
1. Vue.js Ecosystem - The Gentle Giant
Vue felt like a breath of fresh air after years of complex abstractions. Its gentle learning curve meant our team could actually enjoy learning something new instead of drowning in documentation. The progressive nature of Vue allowed us to migrate piece by piece without throwing away everything we'd built.
2. Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and Static Site Generation (SSG) - Performance That Actually Matters
Remember the satisfaction of seeing your users' faces light up when pages load instantly? That's what SSR gave us back. No more apologizing for slow load times or watching users abandon our app because of poor performance.
3. Modular Architecture - Building Blocks That Actually Work
The module system felt like having a Swiss Army knife for web development. Need authentication? There's a module. Want to add PWA features? Another module. It was like having superpowers without the complexity.
4. Developer Experience - Joy in Coding Again
Hot module replacement, intuitive file-based routing, auto-imports—these weren't just features; they were daily gifts that made coding fun again. I started looking forward to Monday mornings because working with Nuxt felt effortless.
5. Performance Optimization - Speed Without the Headache
Code splitting, lazy loading, and bundle optimization happened automatically. We went from performance optimization being a dreaded task to something that just... worked.
6. Strong Community and Ecosystem - Never Coding Alone
The Vue and Nuxt community felt like a warm hug compared to other ecosystems. When we had questions, we got helpful answers, not condescending lectures.
7. TypeScript Support - Safety Net for Growing Teams
As our team grew, TypeScript became our safety net. Nuxt's excellent TypeScript integration meant fewer late-night bug hunts and more confidence in our code.
8. Flexibility and Versatility - One Tool, Many Dreams
Whether we needed a SPA, SSR, or static site, Nuxt adapted to our needs instead of forcing us to adapt to its constraints.
The Hardest Decision: Letting Go
After 2-3 months of falling in love with Nuxt.js, reality hit us like a truck. Our main dashboard—our monolithic masterpiece—was taking forever to build and deploy. Every small change felt like moving a mountain.
The decision to migrate our entire dashboard to Nuxt.js was probably the scariest professional choice we've ever made. This wasn't just changing a tool; this was acknowledging that our baby needed to grow up, and we needed to help it.
Two Years of Living in Two Worlds
What followed was the most challenging period of our careers. For almost two years, we lived in parallel universes—maintaining our legacy dashboard while building its future replacement.
Some nights, I questioned everything. Was this the right choice? Were we over-engineering? Were we solving the right problems?
But then I'd see a team member's face light up when they successfully implemented a complex feature in half the time it would have taken in the old system. Or when a user complimented our app's speed and responsiveness. Those moments reminded me why we started this journey.
The testing cycles felt endless. Develop, port, test, discover edge cases, fix, test again. Repeat. Each iteration brought us closer to something beautiful, but the path felt longer than we'd ever imagined.
September 2025: The Day We Finally Let Go
After what felt like a lifetime of preparation, September 2025 arrived—the day we officially launched our new Nuxt.js dashboard to all our users.
I still remember refreshing our monitoring dashboard, watching user sessions flow seamlessly through the new interface. No critical bugs, no performance issues, just happy users experiencing the modern, fast, delightful application we'd dreamed of building.
The first beta had launched way back in 2023, and seeing how far we'd come felt surreal. We didn't just migrate a codebase—we transformed our entire approach to building web applications.
Today, I'm proud to say that 80% of our new web frontend applications are built with Nuxt.js. It has become our go-to choice for almost every frontend project, proving that our initial leap of faith was absolutely worth it.
Is Nuxt.js Perfect?
No it isn't. Every technology has its trade-offs, and Nuxt.js is no exception. There were moments of frustration, unexpected bugs, and learning curves that tested our patience. We also use some other frontend frameworks for specific projects where they make more sense like React Router for our Shopify app, but overall, the benefits far outweighed the challenges.
Looking Back With Gratitude
Today, when I see new developers joining our team and getting productive in days instead of weeks, I'm reminded that sometimes the hardest decisions lead to the most beautiful outcomes.
Our jQuery and vanilla JavaScript foundation wasn't a mistake—it was our beginning. Nuxt.js isn't just our present—it's the foundation for everything we'll build tomorrow.
If you're reading this and facing a similar decision, know that it's okay to feel scared. It's okay to question whether you're making the right choice. But also know that sometimes, the best way to honor what you've built is to help it become something even better.
What's your migration story? I'd love to hear about your journey!