Hacker News Reader

Comment by monicatie | Hacker News Reader

To add on to this, has anyone tried this stack? What did you like or not like about it? And what goals were you trying to meet?

View on HN

Yes. It's unnecessarily complex. The target audience is someone who:

- knows modern JS - knows ReactJS - knows webpack well - knows how to deal with node_module dependency hell - knows graphql

In other words, a modern professional frontend developer :-)

Why do you need a "modern professional frontend developer" to make a static html website?

It's a bit like asking why you need an editor to read your manuscript or why you need a typesetter to typeset your book (instead of just saving a Word document in pdf and sending it to the printer).

Take a look at Smashing Magazine, for example. That's a static html website built with Hugo. Guess who built it? Professional frontend developers :-)

Maybe you don't need a professional for your site, or maybe you do. If you are a company that is sold on the idea of having a very fast, elegant, interactive, and yet searchable site, then maybe you do. Also, if you are a frontend developer and already have the skills, then maybe you'll like this tech for your own site (I know many frontend devs do).

This is why TakeShape also provides a built-in static site generator[0] using Nunjucks templating (think Django, Twig, Swig, etc). If you are trying to build a simple site this is a great option. The great part of a Headless CMS is that you can choose whatever frontend you want and your solution can evolve with your product.

(Full disclosure I'm a Co-Founder of TakeShape)

[0] https://www.takeshape.io/docs/quickstart/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com