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How I learnt to create blogs in Astro in just three days.

Quite Literally a week ago, as I was procrastinating on youtube, I found out about a static website creation framework named "Astro".


As it's usual in my daily routine, I was avoiding the "shovel" (figuratively speaking), trying to forget that I quit my job for a real immature idea that in order to quit failing as a programmer I had to forget about what was keeping me fed and with a roof over my head.


And that's when a video appeared in front of me, I can't exactly remember if was a youtube short, or a full length video. But I remember the name of the channel and it's creator:


the channel


@CodingInPublic

My experience with other stack for blog creation.

building blogs

...Well, before I even knew about Astro and its existence, I learnt how create some blogs and websites with React, MongoDB, Express and Node.js. Also I learnt about PHP and Mysql, which is my second love after this framework(Astro). But I felt like that kind of stack it just to much for most users that reach out for a freelancer.
So I decided to go Jamstack about it.


Also as I was learning React, I started to setup some CMS's and Learning about Next.js, and I instantly hated it for some reason. Most likely, this hate came from my first impression that was "to much" for me. Since I was trying to learn many frameworks at the same time and I didn't have a good understanding (and I still don't) about typescript.



Why Astro?

how come that I hate Next but love Astro

The stated goal of the Next.js framework is to bring full-stack functionality to the frontend and it is well positioned as the powerhouse for react developers. Next.js is arguably the most widely used framework among developers with React expertise.

Astro is relatively new and not so many people have deep understanding of said framework. So that was the first thing that was tempting me to learn this framework.
Another reason is that Astro sites can load faster with less JavaScript running on the frontend compared to Next.js. Because Astro only shows what's needed and return the rest as static HTML.


This selective server / front side running means you can build fast websites. And the increase in performance will result in improved SEO and thus a better client experience.


Thanks for reading!