Live data from Hacker News

Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

github.com

21–30 of 73 posts

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#21
post #19

Over-engineering at it's finest. React is great for some applications, IMO this is not one of them. To me it just over complicates things for minimal gain.

How extensive is your experience with building static sites? Mine is limited; perhaps there's more to it than meets the eye.

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#22
post #21
post #19

Over-engineering at it's finest. React is great for some applications, IMO this is not one of them. To me it just over complicates things for minimal gain.

How extensive is your experience with building static sites? Mine is limited; perhaps there's more to it than meets the eye.

I'll also say that being able to type in markdown and watch the html page change as I do sounds really nice, and I personally much prefer templating with React to tools like jinja, handlebars, etc. The fact that this generates a site that runs like butter with js and works just fine without it is probably the killer feature for me, however.

I'm also curious how the code complexity for this compares to tools like pelican, Jekyll, etc.

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#23

If its a static site why do you need react?

Some people prefer it as a templating tool (myself included).

React also enables some of the features of the tool. For example, hot reloading the contents of the page while writing/developing, which may make for a smoother experience.

If this isn't to your taste or doesn't fit your requirements, I'm sure the OP and author of the tool would not be offended if you continued to use Jekyll et al.

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#24
post #9

I'm pleasently surprised that the generated sites work just fine with JavaScript disabled (at least on the author's blog). Which on the other hand makes me wonder why I (as the visitor) need to download a 700KB JS blob that contains all blog posts, React and other things just to read the content. Without JS: 4 requests, 20 KB transferred, DOMContentLoaded @ 360ms With JS: 27 requests, 518 KB transferred, DOMContentLo…

As long as the top of the article content (headline + first few paragraphs) loads immediately I don't care if it loads 700kb afterwards for other interactive content. 'Progressive enhancement' should be the primary goal; size reduction is just one means to achieving that but not always required.

From testing out one of the example blogs and this doesn't seem to be a UX issue:

https://bricolage.io/tools-administer-facebook-groups/

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#25
post #19

Over-engineering at it's finest. React is great for some applications, IMO this is not one of them. To me it just over complicates things for minimal gain.

I completely agree. One of those projects where the author was so focused in the `what` instead of the `why`. This kind of projects is why the JS community has bad fame among seasoned developers.

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#26
post #23

If its a static site why do you need react?

Some people prefer it as a templating tool (myself included). React also enables some of the features of the tool. For example, hot reloading the contents of the page while writing/developing, which may make for a smoother experience. If this isn't to your taste or doesn't fit your requirements, I'm sure the OP and author of the tool would not be offended if you continued to use Jekyll et al.

What is so special about hot reloading? Live Reload has been around for about a decade and it's compatible with everything that renders to a web browser. Am I missing something here?

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#27
post #19

Over-engineering at it's finest. React is great for some applications, IMO this is not one of them. To me it just over complicates things for minimal gain.

Did you even read the docs for this project? In my opinion, this pulls together different tools that improve developer experience dramatically. For me personally, hot reloading is quite useful.

Hot reloading is not exclusive to react. Live reloading has been around for about a decade and is compatible with everything that renders to a web browser.

Re: Gatsby – A Static Site Generator for React

#28
post #19

Over-engineering at it's finest. React is great for some applications, IMO this is not one of them. To me it just over complicates things for minimal gain.

I completely agree. One of those projects where the author was so focused in the `what` instead of the `why`. This kind of projects is why the JS community has bad fame among seasoned developers.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN