Yeah, that's what I figured too. Sadly, that shallow / kneejerk response leads to unearned mindshare advantage for problematic incumbents like Next.js, and risks stifling meaningful improvement.

TanStack Start absolutely merits a closer look. It's not a flash in the pan or "the new shiny". It's the robust, coherent, independent and logical evolution of battle-hardened wisdom and brilliant design and implementation from first principles. See TanStack Router and TanStack Query for more evidence and background context. I've been around the block (25+ years in webdev) and gained a deep appreciation for Tanner's way of thinking. No affiliation, just a grateful user trying to help others notice by amplifying the signal in the noise.

P.S. Yes I wrote ~"it's not X, it's Y". No I didn't use genAI to write here (nor anywhere, ever).