Gatsby
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Gatsby is the overachiever that pre-builds your entire website into static HTML at build time, then sprinkles React on top for interactivity. It was the cool kid of static sites before Next.js ate its lunch. Still great for blogs and marketing pages though.
Real Talk
Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that builds pages at compile time using GraphQL data layers. It produces pre-rendered HTML with client-side hydration, offers a rich plugin ecosystem, and excels at content-heavy sites.
When You'll Hear This
"Gatsby builds take 20 minutes but the site is blazing fast" / "The GraphQL data layer in Gatsby is either genius or overkill"
Related Terms
File-Based Routing
File-Based Routing means your folder structure IS your routing. Create pages/about.vue and you get /about.
Islands Architecture
Islands Architecture treats your page like an ocean of static HTML with little islands of interactivity.
Partial Hydration
Partial Hydration is the art of only making interactive the parts of your page that actually need to be interactive. Why hydrate a static paragraph?