New Blog

Last year I launched a new version of my website built in raw HTML with the help of HTML5up and it was a lot of work building things without templates.

A couple of months after I did that, I learned about Gatsby and fell in love with its component-based React + GraphQL build system that make creating a site like this as simple as customizing a template (or starting from scratch), writing some posts, pushing to Github and auto-deploying to Netlify!

The out-of-the-box functionality that Gatsby provides includes SEO and Progressive Web App functionality courtesy of an auto-built service worker that adds the ability to install your website or blog as an application to the home screen of your phone, as well as providing offline functionality.

Gatsby

Gatsby is a free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps

Netlify

Netlify is a San Francisco-based cloud computing company that offers hosting and serverless backend services for static websites. It features continuous deployment from Git across a global application delivery network, serverless form handling, support for AWS Lambda functions, and full integration with Let’s Encrypt. Wikipedia

Progressive Web Apps

Progressive web apps are the next step for the web. They bridge the gap between the web we’re used to, and the power and functionality that only native code has been able to provide until recently.

Most people don’t realize this, but javascript is REALLY fast these days, with some performance metrics putting it behind compiled code like C++ by a factor of 2x, which is a big deal!