A Developer Intentionally Broke Next.js Hydration to Understand It

A developer spent hours deliberately causing hydration mismatches in a Next.js app to learn how React's hydration process works. They discovered that hydration doesn't recheck everything but walks the existing DOM, and mismatches can force a full client-side re-render. The exercise revealed common pitfalls like using new Date() or typeof window incorrectly in server-rendered components.