Published 2020-10-03.
Last modified 2023-04-13.
Time to read: 1 minutes.
jekyll collection.
This is a Jekyll-powered web site. Jekyll is a free open-source preprocessor that generates static web sites. You can extend Jekyll by using the Liquid language to write includes. Includes are just macros for Jekyll.
I prefer to write and use Jekyll plugins instead of Jekyll includes. Non-trivial Jekyll includes require logic to be expressed in the Liquid language. Liquid is an interesting language, but it is quite verbose, syntax can be awkward, some expressions are impossible to formulate, and there are no debugging tools.
In contrast, plugins are written in Ruby. Plugin usage syntax is more flexible and require less typing for users.
The argument against writing plugins is that the Ruby language is subtle and powerful, and could be overwhelming for novice programmers. However, just as the Apache Spark framework allows novice Scala programmers to write in Just Enough Scala for Spark, and the Ruby on Rails framework allows novice Ruby programmers to write Just Enough Ruby for Rails, writing plugins for the Jekyll framework generally does not require total mastery of Ruby.