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The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

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Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#41

Post by pizza234 »

NalNezumi wrote: post #31
ferros wrote: post #5

Personally I work in tech all day, I want my blog to be as simple as possible and to focus just on my writing. Still using Jekyll.

I'm looking in to Jekyll as well, since it's what github recommend and I really can't be bothered with templates and re-learning all web stuff when all I need is to be able to write text and show pictures. Haven't really gotten started with it, but I wonder where the limitation of the tool will be felt? Do you need to know Ruby and the things around it too? I were thinking of also suggest it to my SO who have past ex…

> but I wonder where the limitation of the tool will be felt

I use it and I don't feel any limitation. One can always add Javascript (AFAIK) if they want new functionality.

What bothers me is that adding new functionality should be attempted first in the idiomatic (for the platform) way, which in the Jekyll case, is the Liquid language. I personally don't like it, but it's not a big deal to add small features (e.g. tagging).

Wordpress (AFAIK; I don't use it) has a large amount of plugins. If the intention is from the beginning to customize the blog functionality - as opposed to styling - probably Wordpress can be easier. But we're not talking anymore about a minimalistic design.

> Do you need to know Ruby and the things around it too?

Not at all! Just write in plain markdown with Front Matter.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#42

Post by indigochill »

mhh__ wrote: post #33
jasode wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder what sort of interactivity you want on your text? In case you glossed over it, I think he said it in his post: "But down the road, I may want to build a page that contains an interactive visualization, a filterable table, or a demo of a React component I'm open-sourcing."

Isn't all of that done client side i.e. still possible with a static site?

Yes. You can go crazy with static sites. I use Github Pages for this. On one I've done a single-page Javascript-driven text adventure. On another I've embedded a Unity application that runs a dynamic 3D starmap with WebGL. I've also seen roguelikes. What you can't do is run server-side logic, but you can do an -awful- lot on the client.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#43

Post by matwood »

soygul wrote: post #19

For a techy person, GitHub pages + markdown is all you need: https://quanticdev.com/articles/website-with-github-pages When you already know Git & GitHub, you get an all-in-one experience with your code & website side by side.

Glad someone already said this. And if you want something a bit more fancy, use a static site generator like Jekyll or Hugo.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#44

Post by francisofascii »

jcpst wrote: post #11

I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous for a static site. React and Typescript with embedded markdown? This problem has been solved a thousand times over with much simpler tooling. > I literally have zero memory of how we used to build forms in the pre-React times. :(

100% Agree. But let's be honest. For most developers, the 1st priority of a personal blog is not page views, but job offers. So it makes sense to make your personal site using the tech that matches your skills.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#46

Post by johnrackles »

Earning my daily bread with writing React with TypeScript and using next.js, this is exactly what I would use for my personal blog.

Sorry for the many negative comments. I'm not sure if many people here do websites for a living, but I can't imagine doing stuff any other way anymore. It's just so convinient from a developer standpoint. Is it overkill for some websites? Maybe, but in the end you are dead on with your sentiment that it needs to be fun for YOU to use. So I hope you are not disencouraged by the many negative comments.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#47

Post by andrewzah »

mhh__ wrote: post #33
jasode wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder what sort of interactivity you want on your text? In case you glossed over it, I think he said it in his post: "But down the road, I may want to build a page that contains an interactive visualization, a filterable table, or a demo of a React component I'm open-sourcing."

Isn't all of that done client side i.e. still possible with a static site?

Yes. With static site generators you can still serve custom pages to your heart's content... It's not like you can -only- create posts and that's it.

With Hugo/Zola I set my generator to include MathJax javascript if I enabled it in the front matter of the post. Etc.

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#48

Post by frereubu »

NewEntryHN wrote: post #39
encom wrote: post #6

Here's my stack: I write .html files in GNU Nano, and serve them with Apache. I've done that for about 20 years (with varying editors and servers), and I don't see why it needs to be any more complicated putting words on the internet. Yes yes, old man yells at cloud etc, but I'm a strong believer in "less is more".

It becomes more complicated as soon as a you have a sidebar with "Last articles" in which case you would need to edit each single HTML files to edit the sidebar consistently. Even with a single archives page you need to think about updating the archive for each new article. Also Markdown is definitely more author-friendly than HTML, but that's more like an extra.

If you're using Apache, which he said he was, you can just use server-side includes: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_include.html#e...

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#49

Post by swiley »

dusted wrote: post #34
encom wrote: post #6

Here's my stack: I write .html files in GNU Nano, and serve them with Apache. I've done that for about 20 years (with varying editors and servers), and I don't see why it needs to be any more complicated putting words on the internet. Yes yes, old man yells at cloud etc, but I'm a strong believer in "less is more".

HERESY! The only true path is mine, I write .htm files in vim and serve them with nginx. Yes, I agree, cloudyelling or not, no stack is better. I recall in my teenage years, I built 2 or 4 "CMS" in PHP/MySQL, at the end, added all that AJAX when browsers blessed us with the possibility of making HTTP calls from JavaScript! But in the end, migrating from server to server, learning more about everything, the only thing…

Nginx? Why not busybox httpd with OpenSSL sconnect? So much bloat. :p

Re: The ideal tech stack for a personal developer blog in 2020

#50

Post by tikkabhuna »

jcpst wrote: post #11

I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous for a static site. React and Typescript with embedded markdown? This problem has been solved a thousand times over with much simpler tooling. > I literally have zero memory of how we used to build forms in the pre-React times. :(

We've been using Gatsby for a blog. Writing the layout in React gives us backend devs experience with it whilst staying relatively simple.

Markdown then gives us a nice way to write content and separates layout and presentation from that content.

Gatsby has loads of plugins and examples so getting started is easy. There's a plugin for an RSS feed.

I'm completely with you that a blog can be HTML and CSS, but I can clone a Gatsby starter blog and add some markdown files within 15 minutes. I see this approach as a low cost alternative to Wordpress.

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