[ilyt]

> What happened to "I'll edit this .html file and FTP it up, with maybe a light sprinkling of CSS and js for any interactive elements"?

What happened are people being annoyed with hand-fucking html every time they want to write a blogpost started writing/using static site builders

[Solvency]

So instead of typing ("hand fucking") a few HTML characters around your blog post you trade it in for a big complex orgy of additional abstractions, tools, and processes.

[ilyt]

Yes. HTML is not great and when you have to fuck with CSS to it becomes distracting. Just put the effort once into making template I want then just write markdown.

[philistine]

I don’t understand how something like Jekyll could be considered big and complex. What examples do you have in mind?

[baobabKoodaa]

Well, I run my own blog on Gatsby, and about once per year I have to dedicate a weekend to figure out how to make it run locally again, because the entire JS ecosystem is an unstable hellscape of ever-changing complexity that morphs from one shape to another for absolutely no reason at all.

[philistine]

While I totally understand the node.js idea of building the backend with the same language as the frontend, I don’t understand why anyone should use JS for a static website. The point of a static website is to get away from server troubles, and it seems like building something static on top of JS is just the worst house of cards. I’m happy with my tech choices because I always think about the people behind my choices.

I moved from ConTeXt to XeTeX because the people making context didn’t care about documentation.

I moved to Jekyll because the people behind it were making Github. They built something rock solid.

I moved from Apache to Nginx because the people making it were trying to build something simple to configure. It showed and I could solve my redirect issues in minutes.