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Comment by chimen | Hacker News Reader

Why I'll never build another static site generator:

- because I've done it already and I haven't gained anything from it other than feeding my ego

- it makes me work on keeping it updated to "my custom needs" more than I work on the actual project that needs it

- it always gets outdated really fast, esp if it uses js a lot

- I've learned that it's generally a waste of time, time better spent on other areas of your business and existing tools are good enough

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The idea of a static site generator becoming outdated fast is utterly alien to me: it's a freaking compiler, text in, HTML & CSS out. Unless you sit on a seriously unstable set of dependencies, the whole thing should be pretty stable. I haven't changed my own generator in years. Also, what do you need JavaScript for?

The other points I won't deny, though I sure liked feeding my ego.

In fact, stability is one of the reasons why I use my own static site generator - nothing changes unless I want it to.

It better to generate single-purpose tools, which can be reused, instead of single-use static generator, which cannot be reused.

> it always gets outdated really fast, esp if it uses js a lot

Think you worded that incorrectly. It should be

> it always gets outdated really fast if it uses js a lot

I agree with that point. I wouldn't write a static site generator in JS for that reason.

JS is stable. More stable than most other languages. If you have reservations about NodeJS and the precarious NPM ecosystem, then say that. But equating JS with NodeJS and its community's dubious practices just exacerbates the problem.

Many people equate programming languages with their ecosystem. That’s how you get people claiming that $newlang is so much worse than $oldlang, because it has no tools, no libraries, the compiler generates slow code, there is no community, and you can’t get commercial support.

That may be true, but that doesn’t say which language is better.

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