Hello! You're currently looking at my brand new website (until I inevitably rewrite it again...)!
It's built using Qwik, a revolutionary JavaScript framework, which uses resumability over hydration, like traditional SSR frameworks. This means that after the page is rendered on the server and sent to the browser, the client-side framework does not have to do all that rendering work again on the browser side to bring interactivity (a concept known as hydration). Instead, Qwik's client bundle just "resumes" the execution of interactive JavasScript, i.e. mount-hooks, event handlers, etc. on the client side and picks up where the server left off. Qwik divides the client bundle into chunks, and fetches and runs them only when needed, theoretically resulting in a very fast experience.
I've been wanting to try Qwik for quite some time now, but have not had the opportunity yet because the things I make for work et al. demand a framework whose name known by more than one person. There are also a hundred other technologies I've also been wanting to try, like Rust, Zig, Gleam, Erlang, Elixir, Lisp Flavored Erlang, Kotlin, just to name the languages I've been wanting to try! And if we focus only on JS, we have React, Preact, Svelte, Solid, and now Qwik being the frameworks I have on my roster.
Now yes, this website is certainly not one that demands the most interactivity and performance optimised framework, because it's literally only static HTML as of now. It could've just been Rust + HTMX, and I would've finished building it in an afternoon, but, this is my website, and I get to decide what it's made of! I use my personal side projects as a way to learn new technology and techniques, so I chose Qwik this time. I do plan on using Qwik for some other side-projects, hopefully ones with more interactivity, and I'll certainly post my thoughts on this website soon!
This site was not as simple!
This site was not as simple as it is right now. Currently, if you look at the source code, blog content is present right in the filesystem, and it is compiled from markdown to HTML at build time. This does mean that if I have to make even a small change, I have to deploy the website. Also, edit history of all my posts will be there on GitHub (unless I rebase and force-push of course!).
I did not like that option earlier. Part of me was chasing complexity, I wanted to use everything I know to build this website. One of my initial plans was to implement the server-side rendering in Rust, because Node uses too much memory. Qwik injects a bunch of attributes and comments into your HTML, which are used by the client bundle to "resume" execution. I wanted to write Rust code that would create those attributes and comments in the HTML, so the Qwik client bundle could resume, without having to run a NodeJS server.
That is obviously very ambitious, and I gave up on that thought after not being able to find the documentation for this "protocol" used by Qwik. Yes, I didn't look hard enough.
Once I had decided upon Qwik, I planned on using Vercel for deployment, and I wanted to deploy this site on the Edge. Well, this is how it is deployed right now, but initially, I had planned on storing all my blog posts on some database. Turso came to mind, because as far as I remembered, they were built on Fly.io, which had like thirty locations, and Turso gives you five hundred databases on its free tier. I wanted to replicate my website's database in lots of locations so that the Vercel Edge function could choose the one nearest to it, giving me very fast response times. Unfortunately, I found out that new Turso users would not get databases on Fly.io anymore, but on AWS, and without replication support, so I threw that plan out of the window.
And here we are right now, a simple static website which is just HTML (+ the Qwik JavaScript client bundle
- the CSS, if you're going to be that pedantic), still deployed on the Vercel Edge, with reasonably fast access times. I could do better, but this is enough for now.
You will see changes
Be prepared to see a ton of changes to this website.
I still have to add quite a few more things. For example, there is no table-of-contents for my articles, the markdown features are pretty bare-bones (using Qwik City's built-in MDX support with remark/rehype), and the code blocks are pretty bare-bones.
fn main() {
println!("Hello, world!")
}They're highlighted using Shiki, which uses textmate grammars. I'd like to use treesitter grammars, since that's what my editor uses, allowing me to see exactly how the code would be highlighted on the website from my editor. The code blocks are also pretty bare-bones, since it currently shows the code alone, there's no copy button, line numbers, line highlights, execution, or other fancy features. I'll add them as I see a need (and time).
I want to explore uncharted territory (at least for me) with this website. I'm waiting for Typst's HTML suppport to get better, and I want to use that to write my posts instead of MDX. I've also heard of djot, but haven't looked much into it. I take inspiration from fasterthanli.me's website. They have their own framework written in Rust, and they deploy to multiple servers in different regions. They also have an admin panel built right into the website for faster deploys, which is quite cool!
I'll be tweaking and changing this website, and all of that will be visible to the public at the site's GitHub repository!
Current tech stack
This website is built using Qwik JS and Qwik City. It uses TailwindCSS for styling. Some content is written using MDX, and code is highlighted with Shiki. For other technologies I haven't mentioned, please take a look at the repository.
It is deployed on Vercel, using Qwik's static adapter, which compiles this site down to plain HTML.
