“My stack will outlive yours”: Going back to raw HTML+CSS for websites and blogs

I’m encountering more and more so-called “full stack web developers” who can’t write, read, or debug plain HTML and CSS. They can’t write Javascript from scratch either, even for simple things. I can stop worrying about getting left behind in the world of web development for another decade, I think. Our “stacks” are now Jenga towers.

Definitely agree with the sentiment of plain HTML+CSS being best for static blogs, but I've found value in using a static site generator for any "production" HTML site where the small overhead of a tool is justified because it provides some minor quality-of-life features.

A few things that I've encountered in the past that Hugo solves:

- Page links breaking and requiring rework if you change your site layout.

- Standardizing link formatting, including trailing slashes.

- Editing headers/footers.

- Dynamically deploying separate development & production environments, so teams can preview changes before releasing.

- "Draft" mode, to turn on/off pages without moving or deleting the file.

All of these things you could do by hand, but having them handled automatically makes it less likely that you'll make a mistake. That said, the way I've used Hugo on several projects is pretty similar to your philosophy: Most of the content (index page, styles) is hand-written HTML/CSS, and Hugo is just used to format generic pages and links.

Your labs page is overfitting on a small screen.

OP here, feel free to leave comments