[adriangrigore]

I personally find it insane to use the monstrosity in terms of loc and complexity that the v8 engine is to generate a static HTML web site. I also disagree with other JS based static site generators because of the above reasons. I strongly believe it's a bad idea to have to locally install nodejs or deno and write JavaScript to generate a few HTML pages. Also, I disagree with plain HTML because of duplication.

http://mkws.sh/ uses the standard UNIX tools to generate `HTML` pages featuring a powerful sh based templating engine https://adi.onl/pp.html. Dependencies and complexity are kept to a minimum. It does the minimum required, generate HTML pages and keep duplication low using aprox 400 SLOC.

[mark_and_sweep]

Glad to hear that you prefer shell scripting, but please consider that there are many (web) devs out there who prefer JavaScript:

"Many [devs] are more familiar with the Chrome DevTools console than they are with a Unix command-line prompt. More familiar with WebSockets than BSD sockets, MDN than man pages. (...) Many developers, we think, prefer web-first abstraction layers." -- https://deno.com/blog/the-deno-company

[adriangrigore]

Not sure if matter of preference or matter of right tool for the job and industry agreed best practices regarding simple vs complex. In the sense that you may prefer the round peg, but it doesn't fit the square hole.

I've been doing JavaScript myself for about 15 year, unfamiliar with the UNIX philosophy (to be doubted as any doctrine). Started doing web development using plain HTML the "old school" way, I personally dare to say the _normal_ way.

Before the rise of SPAs I very much agreed with the idea of progressive enhancement which is coming again into attention with the likes of https://turbo.hotwired.dev/.

While doing SPAs I always felt that stuff constantly didn't fit, that we were constantly using unfit tech, doing hacks for benefits of using a single (unfit?) language both on the server and the client, partial loads (faster loading times) and having a single codebase for all OSes. Stuff felt hacky most of the times and we were hiding those complex hacks under what _seemed_ as elegant and simple abstractions. But I believe most experienced JavaScript developers agree that the elegance and simplicity is mostly on the surface. I constantly felt dissatisfied with the code I wrote. I refuse to go on a full rant regarding SPAs and JavaScript but that's the gist of it.

While configuring my dev environment I stumbled up the https://suckless.org/ guys. Their code embodies the UNIX philosophy well although some people, including me, might say that some stuff is too simple. Simplicity for the sake of simplicity is not a good idea (nothing for the sake of anything is a good idea to be honest) but rather as a consequence of you understanding of what's not really needed.

While investigating more more the UNIX world, discovering OpenBSD and using it as a daily driver things started to fit and make sense.

Now, regarding how mkws fits generating static sites, it mimics building a small C project except the Makefile is replaced by a shell script, so all the principles fit and are well established. pp is the compiler, .upphtml files are the sources, html files are the output binaries. Everything integrates and fits well. I feel satisfied about how everything works.

Code is small and simple, abstractions are kept to a minimum. I, as a single person, am able to investigate, understand and change every part of the generating process. Can't say the same thing about a JavaScript static site generator, you don't really need the v8 engine to generate a few HTML files, that's complex, most of use agree simple is relatively good, complex relatively bad as an industry best practice.

Regarding SPAs, I believe they were a quick solution until we properly solve the problems they solve via progressive enhancement.

[5560675260]

> a powerful sh based templating engine > it mimics building a small C project

You're using practices from a language unrelated to webdev, scripting language unrelated to webdev and what looks to be a closed source generator built and (un)maintained by a single person. There probably is a context where this setup makes sense, but to me it's anything but simple or intuitive.