Comment by imtringued
6 days ago
Interesting attempt at bad faith discourse.
Assuming 500 bytes of metadata + URL per blog post, a one megabyte index is enough for 2000 blog posts.
As already mentioned, you don't generate search result pages, because client side Javascript has been a thing for several decades already.
Your suggestion of converting markdown on every request also provides near zero value.
Writing a minimal server backend is also way easier if you separate it from the presentation part of the stack.
Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46489563, it also seems like you fundamentally misunderstand the point. Interactivity is not the point. SSGs are used for publishing writing the same way PDF is used. Nobody sane thinks that they need a comment section in their PDFs.
I'm sorry, I find your post insulting. I wasn't engaging in bad faith discourse intentionally, but your assumption that I am - ironically - doesn't feel like appropriate etiquette here either. Despite that, I'll try answer sincerely.
Your 1 megabyte index file has just added over 2 seconds to your page load time in 30 different countries based on average internet speeds in 2024. Chuck in some pictures, an external comment library and your other SSG hacks, and you've just made your website practically unresponsive to a quarter of the planet and a bunch of other low powered devices.
Value is relative. The benefit of rendering markdown on every request is it makes it easier to make it dynamic, so you don't need to do SSG compromises like rebuild and reupload multiple pages when a single link changes.
You're replying in my thread here, to my original points. My original points were that SSGs don't make sense for sites with interaction, which is why were were discussing the limitations of SSG search approaches.
> SSGs are used for publishing writing the same way PDF is used. Nobody sane thinks that they need a comment section in their PDFs.
Thank you! We're in agreement, it doesn't make sense to use SSGs for sites that require interaction. When you do, it forces the rest of your site to do the compromising search stuff like we're discussing here.
> Your 1 megabyte index file has just added over 2 seconds to your page load time
It might not be intentional (I doubt), but your replies really read like bad faith discourse.