What the Gatsby

I've been a frontend developer for most of my career. And my career has been going on for quite a few years now. I started with jQuery, migrated to Backbone.js, tried out Angular, and settled on React.js. I know my way around Node.js, use Webpack, and consider myself quite proficient at what I do.

Recently I wanted to try out Gatsby.js, a supposedly "static site generator". Well, it generates static sites. But I was almost overwhelmed by all the things which Gatsby does for you automatically. Don't get me wrong. Using tools which automate repetitive tasks is a good thing. However, using tools without understanding how they work is risky business. So I decided to start breaking down what Gatsby actually does, and explore these concepts separately, one at a time.

I'll have a look at the following Gatsby features:

• Compilation
• Module Bundling
• Live-reloading dev server
• React
• Static site generation
• Client-side routing