[esperent]

I use two pieces of backend software: Django and Hugo. Django is hugely more complex and I have considerably more experience with Hugo... And yet I run into far fewer problems and get stuff done faster with Django.

Hugo has exactly one thing going for it compared to other static site builders: it's fast. I have about 100 pages now and they build in <1second.

Aside from that, it's a pain to work with. The documentation is sparse but serviceable, but the community on GitHub and Discourse leaves a lot to be desired. Grumpy and unresponsive and much more inclined to close your issue or tersely tell you to read the docs than provide help or admit you have a valid feature request/bug report.

[oliwarner]

I would disagree with your complexity assessment there. Hugo has so much inferred logic and "magic" that working out why your pages aren't showing correctly can take hours before you notice the silly mistake you made. You're just slapped in the face until it starts working.

Django is of course a lot bigger, with many more moving parts, but it's much more explicit, Nd the documentation is superb; you're running a lot quicker.