So finally, after tedious process, I decided to use Astro - the latest blazing amazing new next-gen static site generator or whatever.
Seriously frontend tooling has been over the edge in the past few years, with so many next-gen stuff popping out of nowhere. Astro was not on my list, and I very much wanted to avoid something as warm-blooded (cold-blooded software) as Astro.
Before that, why did I decide to move away from Jekyll?
Jekyll meant extra tooling for me. As it is I’m fed up dealing with multiple versions of node.js, python, java and a host of other software. I didn’t want another rbenv, rvm and a messed up apt repo with ruby and rubygems installed nor deal with some of the nokogiri compilation issues that pops up randomly. I wanted a simpler solution. Something like bashblog.
My requirements were
- As little bloat as possible, eg. no npm, no webpack, etc
- Minimum or single static binary tooling which I don’t have to maintain for years together
- A clear and legible apperance, with accessibility out of box, like for example Cupper
Unsurprisingly after careful considerations, just like most corporate decisions I decided to use something which couldn’t get any furthur away from my original requirements.
Why Astro?
Astro stood out in one aspect. It was fast. There was no competition. Bashblog was fast. But Astro was faster. This was baffling. How could a static html website be slower than something with more javascript and markup like an astro site? On digging around, I noticed that as soon as I hover over a link, Astro prefetches the page even before I click on it.
Apart from speed, Astro was convenient to me in other ways. It used node.js which is my comfy tool, had github action to deploy to github-pages and also SEO friendly. Migrating was a piece of cake since my old blog was already in markdown.
And thus even though I wanted a lesser maintenance tool, this blog shall be in Astro for a good time ahead.