New site!
Welcome to the obligatory inaugural blog post about how I made this site! Starting out, I knew I wanted the site to be plain html files hosted on github pages. There are a wide variety of static site generators up to this task, but I felt like creating one myself would be a fun little project. Keep reading to see how I did it!
Webdev
I first learned web development about 15 years ago, at which point I was editing phpbb forums and wordpress blogs for myself and friends. Thankfully, society has progressed past the need for php, and javascript & css have since gained a lot of bells and whistles. I have managed to keep my skills from rusting and stay mostly up to date over the years.
After some experience working with React, I was tempted by the Next.js framework’s ability to generate a static site. However, this turned out to not be very motivating to work on and was quickly abandoned after setting up the build pipeline. I needed something a little more… exciting.
Rust 🦀
I have never felt quite so ambivalent about a technology as I do about Rust. True Rustaceans would say I just haven’t written enough Rust yet and I’ll come around to loving it (once the stockholm syndrome kicks in). I get the feeling they’re correct since I have been enjoying using Rust more and more as I finish this project.
The HTML generation (and minification) is all handled by less than 200 lines of Rust, and I find it easy to read and work on.