So Astro is basically a (what we used to call) "static site generator" in that case? Something that existed for decades, and is basically just "compiling" templates, which could be in various syntaxes and languages, but in this case it's for JavaScript specifically. I guess the "what's old is new" point continues to stand tall :)
Again I'm failing to see exactly what Astro is "innovating" (as you and others claim they're doing). It's nothing wrong with taking a workflow and making it really stable/solid, or making it really fast, or similar. But for the claim to be "innovative" to be true, they actually have to do something new, or at least put together stuff in a new way :)
I am not saying Astro is innovative and I don’t think I implied that in my reply. I don’t view Astro as innovative and I don’t understand people who view it like that because of, say, its islands. (We knew about islands before Astro.)
As you said, in the example I shared Astro is an SSG. It happens to use server-side JS but this is is irrelevant.
But it is more than that. Astro is an SSG and it is also a *very well made* SSG.
I have used all the usual suspects: Ruby ones, Go ones, Python ones, JS ones. The closest I came to having fun was 11ty, but 11ty is a bit too chaotic for me. Astro is the one that clicked. And the one that was fun to use right from day 1.
I am not a JavaScript person, mind you. JavaScript is not my strongest FE skill. The JS conventions, tricks, and syntaxes of modern FE frameworks, even less so.
So Astro did not click for me because of that. It clicked because of how well it is made and because of how fun it is to use.
Oh! It does this!
Oh! It does that!
Oh! It gives you type safety for your Markdown meta! (What?!)
Oh! It gives you out of the box this optimization I was putting together manually! You just have to say thisOptim: true in the configuration file!
Astro is a very well made tool that improves continually and that aligns with my vision of the platform and of how we should make stuff for the platform.
Again I'm failing to see exactly what Astro is "innovating" (as you and others claim they're doing). It's nothing wrong with taking a workflow and making it really stable/solid, or making it really fast, or similar. But for the claim to be "innovative" to be true, they actually have to do something new, or at least put together stuff in a new way :)