Static site generators are the new Fibonacci generator. When you learn a language it's a fun little exercise, and possibly even useful.
Also, everyone has slightly different requirements, so everyone likes to build their own.
I will most likely soon build my own static site generator, because none of the ones out there do exactly what I want. I will most likely borrow from at least a few of the examples out there and then post it on my github so there is yet another one.
I think we're seeing a proliferation simply because it is so easy to share code these days. Imagine how many Fibonacci generators would have been out there if it were as easy to share code when those were popular (I want to say 10 years ago but maybe it was longer).
Had the same problem ourselves while building Segment.io that every static site generator was a bit too opinionated in weird ways, so we made Metalsmith[0]. Check it out, and you might not need to make your own anymore :)
from math import sqrt
from decimal import Decimal
def fib(n):
x = Decimal((1 + sqrt(5)) / 2) ** n
x -= Decimal((1 - sqrt(5)) / 2) ** n
return x / Decimal(sqrt(5))
print fib(1000)
print fib(10000)
print fib(1290309123)
$ time python ~/fib.py
4.346655768693891359691727380E+208
3.364476487644307695949089018E+2089
2.879417086171668653426018537E+269658658
real 0m0.138s
user 0m0.086s
sys 0m0.026s
I've been looking at some of the options on that website, and this one seems to be less complex than many of the tools there. This isn't meant to be a blogging tool, but rather a simple way of emulating server-side includes or basic PHP includes in static HTML. I'm sure a few of those exist in that list, but when has "somebody built that already" become a gate for writing code?
Also, everyone has slightly different requirements, so everyone likes to build their own.
I will most likely soon build my own static site generator, because none of the ones out there do exactly what I want. I will most likely borrow from at least a few of the examples out there and then post it on my github so there is yet another one.
I think we're seeing a proliferation simply because it is so easy to share code these days. Imagine how many Fibonacci generators would have been out there if it were as easy to share code when those were popular (I want to say 10 years ago but maybe it was longer).