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Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by callmeed on Friday December 25, 2009 @06:29PM (#1015478)
And Jekyll

http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll

is static site generation a big pain point for a lot of people?

Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by henning on Friday December 25, 2009 @06:35PM (#1015486)
Static blogging is the new twitter client is the new dynamic blog as an app to implement your own version of?
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by callmeed on Friday December 25, 2009 @08:15PM (#1015569)
don't forget the URL shortener
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by Legion on Friday December 25, 2009 @08:30PM (#1015579)
That is the part I'm not understanding. What does using one of these "static site compilers" save me from?

I guess being able to use layouts that get "baked" into each of the final static HTML files would be handy.

Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by brianm on Friday December 25, 2009 @10:03PM (#1015653)
Mostly it takes you from thinking 50 requests per second is pretty good to being annoyed that you are only pushing 10,000 per second. It also tends to fail a whole lot less.
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by compay on Saturday December 26, 2009 @08:32AM (#1015942)
And hosting it for free at Github.
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by hazexp on Friday December 25, 2009 @09:25PM (#1015628)
It also drastically lowers the amount of processing overhead per page served, after all, there's no dynamic code to process nor are there any database queries to execute.
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by swombat on Friday December 25, 2009 @08:38PM (#1015584)
I guess being able to use layouts that get "baked" into each of the final static HTML files would be handy.

They all do that.

Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by swombat on Friday December 25, 2009 @06:35PM (#1015485)
I don't know, but I found Webby to be just fine... so I'm not sure why we need three static site generators that all seem to function more or less the same...
Re:Nanoc: a Ruby site compiler that generates static HTML by telemachos on Friday December 25, 2009 @06:56PM (#1015510)
I would say the same about this conversation. My point being that I could pretty quickly find two previous Hacker News posts that discuss Jekyll and then quickly come around to the question: why do we need another <Webby/StaticMatic/Nanoc>?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411750

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=998411

One thing I know distinguishes Jekyll is that it uses Liquid which restrcts the templating in a way that makes it safer for some uses than giving the user access to ERB.

In answer to the more general question, I would ask how many scripting languages, text editors, email clients, etc. do we need? Programmers seem to love building things that work exactly as they want. So for all the talk about not reinventing the wheel, we get lots of overlapping toys. I don't think it's necessarily a bad things. More versions can lead to new ideas.