Trying new things
It’s time to break out of the mold, folks. I’ve been stuck in my ways for far too long. Ever since I discovered Laravel almost 10 years ago, I’ve been unable to escape its grip. Almost every project I’ve worked on has at least had a Laravel backend. It has become too familiar now, so that if I just want to get stuff done, it’s the first thing I’ll reach for (assuming I need a database or authorization).
When I started this site, I wanted to do something different. My goal was to make it as simple as possible. I started out at first with a couple of bash scripts that called pandoc to convert markdown files to HTML. While it worked, I soon hit limitations and wanted to explore other options.
Astro was recommended to me, and I wanted to try it because it supports markdown, so it would be easy to convert everything. Migrating to Astro was smooth; I was able to just copy over all of my markdown pages and make some small updates.
If anyone were to ask, I would highly recommend Astro over my previous bash scripts. Astro is much more efficient and capable than what I had been using. Using Pandoc was a fun experiment, but I can do a lot more with Astro. I’m glad I didn’t just reach for Laravel again, especially for something so simple.
There are a lot of interesting new tools out there, and I’m doing myself a disservice by not checking them out. I had been overwhelmed by the churn of Javascript frameworks and tools, and after working primarily on the backend with Laravel for the past few years, it made me less inclined to explore new Javascript tools. But I don’t want to be limited by one framework or too rigid to try new things.
It’s time to embrace the new and try out different tools. Many of these new tools make building projects so much easier and efficient. It’s time to stop wasting time and focus on what’s important.