Comment by slorber | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slorber | Hacker News Reader

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JimDabell I'm sorry if it feels so.

I think I'm quite fair with other tools.

I shouldn't have used the word "toy" but I mean it. I really dislike tools such as Docsify or MDWiki and can clearly back this up: those tools rely way too much on JS, are not "progressively enhanced", are bad for SEO, accessibility... they have their little use-cases but you should IMHO avoid them in most cases if you are looking for building anything serious.

Other tools such as VitePress, VuePress, MkDocs, Nextra... are all great sane competitors of Docusaurus.

I just believe that Docusaurus is more featured and flexible, that's all.

These other tools have other advantages that Docusaurus do not always have, but I claim the right to defend Docusaurus where it really shines.

Sometimes being less featured is an actual advantage (simplicity). Sometimes being built on another platform (Nextra using Next.js, Dokz using Gatsby), frontend framework (VuePress, VitePress using Vue.js...) or language (MkDocs using Python) is another advantage.

I understand that my words might look offensive, and sorry for that. Please also take into consideration my feelings when you compare a 1 day home-made setup with a project being worked on since 2018.

> I just believe that Docusaurus is more featured and flexible, that's all.

That’s not the problem. This is the problem:

> they have their little use-cases

If you look at what other people in this thread are doing when they are comparing other tools to yours favourably, they are talking about what Docusaurus does better.

When you reply to somebody comparing other tools to yours unfavourably, you jump to belittling the other tool.

It gives a really bad impression of Docusaurus that, when you think about it in relation to other tools, you aren’t thinking of what Docusaurus does well, but immediately try to belittle the alternative in some way. Docusaurus can’t be all that great if the best things you can think of are insults about some other tool.

The most convincing comments in favour of Docusaurus are coming from everybody but you. I don’t think that’s what you are trying to achieve with your comments here is it?

I'm not belittling all other tools, just MdWiki (and Docsify that I consider in the same category of client-side JS, hash-based docs tool).

All the other docs tools are great too, and I'm not saying Docusaurus is better. I believe Docusaurus can scale from small sites to very advanced doc sites with minimal effort.

If I were a Python dev looking for something simple but that remains quite flexible, I'd definitively try MkDocs.

If I were a Vue dev I'd try first VitePress/VuePress before Docusaurus. It has less features but a great UI design, some convenient Md features, and it's convenient for a Vue dev/team to reuse their existing VueJS knowledge.

If I had a Next.js site and wanted to integrate docs feature in the same site, I would try Nextra.

Really, apart my comment on MdWiki (which I still stand by: most of you shouldn't use it), I think I'm fair with all the other tools?

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