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Preface:

I am not an expert. I am just learning React and wanted to learn Thunk and Redux. This is me documenting my learning journey and circling back to try and help others doing the same thing with (hopefully) relevant stuff.

I am linking the most helpful resources and articles I found at the end. They are the experts. My most helpful contribution may be to those climbing the learning curve of unfamiliarity like I just did. Once you’re there, those folks will take you home.

Photo by George Coletrain on Unsplash

What are ‘Static Site Generators’ (SSG’s), what are the pros and cons, and when should we use them?

When building my own personal portfolio website, I chose to lean into static site generators and learn something new. The personal portfolio is an excellent use case for a Hugo site hosted somewhere like Netlify, and that is just what I did with RobertKevinPhillips.com.

In this post I will:

1. Explain what SSG’s are
2. Cover pros & cons
3. List some popular SSG sites that may surprise you

What are Static Site Generators (SSG’s)?

The name here tells us a lot. The implication, obvious, that some sites are static while others are dynamic. In the case of static, think fixed or constant content. This means that, just like creating a Word document and clicking save, developers create HTML content for a whole website (perhaps many pages thereof) and save that version of the content. They then upload all of this content server where it can be delivered upon request to browsers, and quite well by the way. More on that later…

In this post I will:

1. Briefly explain what an API is
2. Share my experience growing learning to use API’s
3. Give a practical example using the Unsplash API

What is an API?

“API stands for Application Programming Interface. In layman’s terms, these interfaces are what allow software solutions to communicate with each other. It helps to think of them as the “engine under the hood,” and the backbone of the connectivity that our society has come to rely upon.”
https://www.shippingschool.com/what-is-an-api-in-laymans-terms/

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They say a “carpenter is only as good as his tools. I am not sure I swallow that in full but I know many a carpenter who enjoys his tools as much or more than the any of the things built with those tools. I think I understand. They live and work with them every day and they live on with him from job to job. You may say they are a big part of his quality of life.