hello world
2024-11-05
I’ve tried to start blogging about technology topics many times, but I’ve always got stuck on the first step: finding some software that allows you to blog. I’ve installed a blogging components a few times but always came felt that they were overly complex applications for what I needed.
Last night I found myself giving ghost a go to see if it would be usable and integratable to my site. After the installer had spent 10 min downloading the npm modules and seeing the Stripe integration in the admin console I decided it’s not for me.
So I built my own system.
postaaja
It’s a super simple system for a simple man. postaaja takes a directory of markdown files with a specially crafted filename that includes a date and title. A go server reads the directory and renders it as HTML on request. It has just one depedency for rendering markdown in addition to go std lib.
It’s like building websites in the 90s all over again, except instead of using PHP I’m using Go. There’s no ajax or react, just static HTML pages. Also the resource utilization is a blast from the past: 15 MiB of memory and instant startup.
I could have built a static site generator for the same effort (and I still might) but according to hey postaaja can serve any page in the site 0.5 ms P50, almost no difference to service static files over go’s fileserver. So the overhead of light rendering on an application server is negligible on site as simple as this. Also pressing save on a text editor for the markdown file and refreshing browser is a familiar vibe.
aesthetics
I’m not a web developer by any means. This is the most html+css I’ve written in the past 6 years and it’s like 200 lines. I’ve always enjoyed reading personal blogs that look like they have been built by the author themselves, in a good way of course. I’m hoping this conveys the same mood as my sources of inspiration.
There’s something overly nice about software hand crafted for the user’s needs. Most software used to be like that very early on, but today bespoke software is a rare commodity.
In away this is a celebration of being able to write something useful for youself.
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