How flexible is Hugo? And how many plugins does someone generally use?
It processes Markdown, JSON, YAML and SASS, can pull in data files from URLs, and has custom templates/themes, custom macros/shortcuts, image processing and live reload. It doesn't have a plugin system as far as I know but nothing stops you combining Hugo with other tools e.g. run a JS script to pull in and transform a JSON file before Hugo runs.
Preparing data for external use always takes extra effort.
You can build an efficient self-contained tool in JavaScript too.
Pretty much every new ES6 feature required parser and babel-core changes just to be able to be used.
Example: a lot of changes that only worked in Babel 7 (that was on Beta for months) were not possible in Babel 6, and so on for previous versions. A plugin was not enough: you also needed parser/core changes.
Other than for novel non-standard features (like code substitution), plugins are not exactly that powerful, and even things like that are frowned upon in most environments, as 99.9% of people just want ES6 features.
How much effort are you really talking about for a static site though? Can you be specific?
Most sites I've worked on are processing a modest number of Markdown + JSON files, where sometimes these are pulled in from an external URL. Why does any of this require anything particularly complicated or anything that could justify a big performance hit?
> You can build an efficient self-contained tool in JavaScript too.
Does one exist for static site generators though?
It does have themes, but I just write my own.