[michaelt]

I use a static site generator for my blog - but as I only post once or twice a year, I generally find I'm fixing broken static site generation about as often as I'm writing a blog post.

Using a mac? I hope you've got xcode installed to give you command line tools. No, you can't get that to work without logging into your Apple account. Right, now just install these tools using homebrew. Oh, homebrew's giving some git error? Sorry, you're on your own. Got homebrew working? Right, better make sure you've got ruby and gem and python and nodejs installed. Still doesn't work? Oh, that's because you're missing redcarpet, just gem install redcarpet. It didn't work? Oh, guess I actually need a development version of ruby.

Moved to Linux? Good news, there's a jekyll package right there. Bad news is it's outdated and won't build your site. Time to install ruby and gem then use them to install jekyll. Didn't work? Oh, you don't want that version of ruby, you need the development version, gotta have the right files so you can compile things as they download.

So no, I don't recommend static site generation to anyone who isn't a veteran error-message-googler.

[thangngoc89]

Hey, I think you're mistaking static site generator === Jekyll. My favorite is Hugo[1]. Just grab the binary and it can run everywhere. I mean everywhere. No need to setup the build tools, environment

[1]: https://gohugo.io/

[beat]

I switched to Hugo too. I haven't really dug deeply enough into it, though.

[thangngoc89]

If it's working for you, no need to dig it. That's my principle.

[TheRealPomax]

This seems like an opinion that was formed based on bad experiences with some SSG that have particularly poor management processes. And that could be wildly popular SSG with the tech crowd, but popular is not the same as good.

Obviously, bad SSG are bad, but not all of them are: any SSG worth recommending to the general public in exchange for money (i.e. recommending to your customers) is one that doesn't rely on the user first making sure their "tech stack" is set up properly: it just comes with a normal installer (even if that "installer" takes advantage of the OS it's running on to grab all the dependencies it needs for itself and uses a preinstalled scripting language to run the system under the hood).

And of course typically these still have a "this project is open source, click here for our git repo!" link that normal users will NEVER use, but power users are drawn to like moths to a flame. Their experience, however, is not what you're going to sell your customers =)

[vcanales]

This comment is a huge exaggeration of the effort it takes. You don't even really need full xcode to run terminal on mac.

There's options like Netlify to use as CMS: https://github.com/netlify/netlify-cms

Hugo will run anywhere.

In Linux you don't need to install the distro's packaged version; source is where you should go.

There is an added difficulty, but it's not as painful as you make it seem.

[shimon_e]

And this is why I love arch linux and even use it on all my servers. These days I rarely run into a package that doesn't work or is severely outdated.