I have always liked the idea of static-website generation. I even built my own static-site generator 10 years ago.
But for this blog, I didn’t use that static-site generator. I used Hugo and I chose PaperMod. I chose these because they are popular, and well-used (and fast!)
One of the painful lessons I have learned as a software engineer is that simpler and popular are almost always better. By choosing a framework that is popular, I choose something with known support and longevity. By choosing a framework that is simple (in this case static-site generation), I reduce my cognitive overhead, leaving me time to do what I actually want (write blog posts).
I want to know that in 5 years, my blog will still roughly work the way I expect it to. When I get stuck, I want to be able to find answers. When I want to fix something, I want to know that the owner is going to respond to my PRs. The more esoteric the library, the framework, the theme, the automation, etc., the more likely that it will disappear, that it will be unsupported.
There are several related principles:
- Use what other people around you are using.
- Be very wary of the urge to make a thing from scratch. You better have extremely good reasons for it.
- I do not want to use your new configuration language.
- If you want other people to use your software, you need to support it.