Tech

This is a static generated site, or SSG.

Guiding Principle: Too Clever By Half

We are awash in tech that is too clever by half.

The best tech is usually a much simpler standardization of a very clever early adaptation.

When the simpler, dumber, more standardized tech evolves, one approach is to go with that standard, keeping it simple and straightforward.

Holding on to the more clever, earlier versions of a tech is not wrong, but it also looks suspiciosly like a form of self-comfort or addiction.

SSG Tech: 11ty

This site uses a very easy to use, standards based SSG or static site generator named 11ty.

If you want to learn more about static site generators, you might want to check here first.

With hundreds to choose from, 11ty was selected because it seems to be the dumbest, simplest, and most standards based, while at the same time having been around many years and being very fully featured.

Phone Friendly: PWA

This site is designed to be

• phone friendly
• super fast
• installable as an app on either IOS or Android or even plain desktop devices.

All the while, it is one codebase - not a separate app for IOS, Android, and desktop. Dumb, fast, easy.

To accomplish the above, it implements the PWA or Progressive Web App standard. A tool called Lighthouse helps test this functionality against the PWA standard.

PWA features are currently in broken. Because, of course it is. I have some minor adjustments to make which would take at least a few minutes.

App or Site? Yes.

There are apps. Think React or any similar tech. Traditionally known for speed and dynamic behavior.

And then there are sites. AKA "Web Site". Great for SEO, and one page at a time content.

This site has dynamic "App" functionality, like a React or Vue or Angular app. But it's a part of the site. Want to learn more? Search terms: "MPA vs SPA", but here's a fair warning ... you will also find a bunch of outdated and misleading material.

The dynamic app portions of any page on this MPA site are as fast as an SPA, because this page uses extremely light tech, and delegates the heavy lifting to the browser, not the libraray (like React, JSX ...)

This is sometimes really hard for devs to understand, because years ago it was speed of SPA vs SEO of MPA. Pick one, but you couldn't have both, at that time.

App Stacks

• Web Components
• Lit
• Signals
• AsyncComputed

Monorepo Stacks Used

A partial list

• pnpm
• turbo
• rollup
• vite
• typescript
• vscode plugins