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Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

tom.preston-werner.com

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Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#21

Post by wortelefant »

ryacko wrote: post #17
stakhanov wrote: post #4

You call that blogging like a hacker? This is blogging like a hacker: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html This is blogging like a hacker: https://blog.fefe.de/

Interestingly, according to your links it looks like hackers invented microblogging. Most of those blog posts aren’t longer than a paragraph.

From my own writing I found that short blogposts have many advantages, it really helps to update the blog more regularly than my previous strategy of writing essays twice a year. The lack of pictures also keeps the time investment low, I am less busy with choosing vague unsplash eye candy since. Seth Godin is my favorite short form writer, at least in terms or style, he really gets to the point.

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#22

Post by outworlder »

unpwn wrote: post #14

Recently set up a static gen blog. I went with Hugo over Jekyll. I think its a bit personal preference tbh, but I really liked Hugo's layout, speed, and kinda prefer hacking with Go over Ruby if it comes to that.

I like Hugo too – but it came much later as is probably influenced by Jekyll.

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#23

Post by outworlder »

gr8pes wrote: post #6

What about Ghost blog? I have been wanting to dive into some of my own blogging and have been trying out Ghost ( https://ghost.org/ ). It has been really fun trying to find a theme that I like and the native apps make it very pleasing to work on.

Ghost is like the antithesis of this post.

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#24

Post by outworlder »

stakhanov wrote: post #4

You call that blogging like a hacker? This is blogging like a hacker: https://www.stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html This is blogging like a hacker: https://blog.fefe.de/

GET OFF MY LAWN.

If we are gatekeeping, THIS (was) blogging like a hacker:

https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#25

Post by nickjj »

Jekyll is great. It's what I use to run my site for the last ~4 years with about 250 posts (it's still very fast -- reloads happen in less than 3 seconds).

It really doesn't take too much effort to use existing Jekyll features to add in custom "user features" into your site. You can go so far without needing to write your own plugins.

For example, I just put out a video a few days ago that goes over using "includes" to add 3 unrelated site features (site wide affiliate link notices, a table of contents for blog posts and embedding media): https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/implementing-3-different-webs...

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#26

Post by xtagon »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #3

Fascinating. For those who click to read the comments before the actual article, this is Mr. Preston-Werner's introduction of Jekyll, the Ruby static site generator, to the world. He lays out his reasons for creating the tech: >>>First, all my writing would be stored in a Git repository. This would ensure that I could try out different ideas and explore a variety of posts all from the comfort of my preferred editor a…

And there are many more options now, in various languages. StaticGen.com has a pretty big list.

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#27

Post by greggman2 »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #3

Fascinating. For those who click to read the comments before the actual article, this is Mr. Preston-Werner's introduction of Jekyll, the Ruby static site generator, to the world. He lays out his reasons for creating the tech: >>>First, all my writing would be stored in a Git repository. This would ensure that I could try out different ideas and explore a variety of posts all from the comfort of my preferred editor a…

I switched to a static site gen and a git repo. I lost the ability to preview. Sure, if I'm at home I can run the build script, launch a simple server, navigate to the page on localhost but it's a long way from say wordpress (previous solution) where it was a much nicer experience to preview.

Adding images into a post was also nicer. Just drag and drop instead of copy into folder, check into git, manaully type urls like it is now.

I use a private repo on github so at least I can add something without having to be at my computer but still no preview or nice UI.

Any static generators have well designed solutions for this?

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#28

Post by mettamage »

bhaak wrote: post #2

I often remark that IT in general is a history-less space. I wonder if Tom would have developed Jekyll if he knew about Blosxom? Blosxom had its last release in the same month when Jekyll had its first. The blog post seems to imply that he came up with the idea and code for Jekyll all by himself. But also as he's a Ruby guy, it's likely he would have ported over the code and concepts to his own project.

Your comment gave me an idea. I'm not going to do it alone (I think), but someone should do it.

Start a podcast/educational website on the history of tech.

For anyone who wants to do it together and see if it's a fun project to pursue, email me :) (in my profile)

Or are there already podcasts on it? If so, I haven't seen it appear on HN.

Re: Blogging Like a Hacker (2008)

#29

Post by mettamage »

outworlder wrote: post #23
gr8pes wrote: post #6

What about Ghost blog? I have been wanting to dive into some of my own blogging and have been trying out Ghost ( https://ghost.org/ ). It has been really fun trying to find a theme that I like and the native apps make it very pleasing to work on.

Ghost is like the antithesis of this post.

Lol, I literally used Ghost for a while and used Jekyll to convert it into a static blog. It allowed me to use Markdown to quickly write blog posts. Jekyll would create a static version of my public localhost, and I'd push it to Github.
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