The main components I used, are: NestJS with Express as an app server, KnexJS as a query builder (because people seem to not like TypeORM that much, it lacks migrations and you have to go pretty fast to custom SQL queries), NextJS for the UI.

Yeah, I totally feel you with falling behind regarding the full-stack web dev with node/react, the pace is incredible.

> people seem to not like TypeORM that much

I started down the road with TypeORM for my starter, and I ran into several pain points. I was reading the Knex docs last night actually, heavily considering switching. I also wrote a quick `pg.ts` file to just use node-postgres directly, but the lack of migrations is just too painful. I looked at db-migrate briefly but didn't come to any conclusion.

So that's a long way of saying, I think Knex was a good choice. Provides migrations, handles connection pooling and transactions, but doesn't deviate too far from SQL.

if you're using react then definitely checkout https://www.bytehub.dev/ for some cool react components