Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Static Site Generators: Time Travel for Your Website

2025-09-02

While revisiting old blog posts, the author discovered the power of using a static site generator (Eleventy) with Git for effortless time travel through their website's history. Eleventy's approach of fetching posts from a CMS and including them in each commit creates a full snapshot of the website at every commit. This contrasts with websites using databases (like WordPress), which make accessing past versions more difficult. While the author previously implemented a GitHub Action to take monthly screenshots, the combination of Eleventy and Git makes this less crucial.

My Secret Stash: Why I'm Hesitant to Share My Dotfiles

2025-08-06

The author loves dotfiles – configuration files for software and operating systems – and enjoys sharing ideas and code. However, they're hesitant to publicly release their own extensive dotfiles repository, which includes configurations for zsh, tmux, neovim, vscode, a Homebrew package list, Stylus CSS rules, and is managed with GNU Stow. They feel their personalized customizations are too intimate to share, despite the coolness factor. This raises questions about the balance between personalized developer configurations and open-source sharing.

A Programmer's Secret Weapon: Handwritten Notes Outperform Code Editors

2025-05-28

A software developer shares his unique insights on using a notebook for thinking and problem-solving. He argues that handwriting thoughts and diagrams in a notebook, before writing code directly on a computer, allows for better clarity and identifying solutions. This method helps transform vague ideas into concrete plans, discover flaws and design defects in code, and leaves a valuable record of the thought process for later reference. For him, a notebook is a more important tool than a code editor.