I sort of still want to just… finish the static site generator I started a week or so ago? But also, of course I’ve hit the place where the essential complexity of even a simple SSG becomes apparent; that is, assuming you want something like a blog. You need to at least enumerate your posts and create a page with a list of posts, of some sort.

Then, if you’re really optimistic and assume you’re actually going to write in this thing (😂) you need to consider, should this list of posts be all posts ever? What if there’s … more than 50? More than 100? So then you start thinking about pagination.

Then you start thinking about generating RSS feeds

Then you start thinking about just using existing SSGs again... 😂

@philcrissman do you have 50 or 100 posts?

@kfm that’s just it, of course not yet. But there’s still this feeling that this eventuality should be planned for.

FWIW, wayyyyy back when I used to post to a blog regularly, yes, I had well over 100 posts past some point. So I know if you do post regularly it doesn’t take long 🤷‍♂️

The whole reason I’m doing this is to hopefully reduce my friction for writing, so, theoretically, this is something I should think about 😃

@philcrissman Reading through @zenspider@ruby.social’s zenweb source was pretty interesting for seeing how he approached some of those complexities.

@philcrissman so, if you don't have 50 to 100 posts, then there is no barrier to writing. Write, until the barrier presents itself. Then remove the barrier. Then keep writing.
Now take this with a grain of salt. "Don't preemptively optimize" and "move fast until you break something" sounds great until you are the guy at Boeing that writes the software for measuring fuel levels within the plane...

@kfm I agree, but I guess I’m also hoping that if I do actually roll my own SSG, I can get away without obsessively tweaking and maintaining it. 😂 That is also probably wishful thinking. But the ideal would be that it’s something that doesn’t need a lot of future changes.

@alpha I haven’t looked at that for years, sounds worth a look again, thanks!

@philcrissman ... If you don't want to obsessively tweak it to exactly what you want to do, then why are you writing it? For who?

@kfm for me

@philcrissman this was supposed to be a reply to you, but I guess it works as a standalone message to everyone! https://ruby.social/@benpickles/111484549389839186

@benpickles I will definitely take a look… but I definitely don’t think I want to roll myself a rails or Sinatra app for this

🤔 okay, now I’m thinking about it 😂