I coded up the last two versions (this and the last one) of this site by hand. Raw html, css, and a few lines of javascript. Other than fonts, the only part I didn't write was a syntax highlighting library that I begrudgingly (yet without hesitation) included from Prism.js. Practically speaking, writing the site by hand is worth it for me. In a business building a living, breathing piece of software, libraries and frameworks are great. For a personal site that I update once a decade, I'd rather not enter dependency hell every time I touch the code. My other motive is more philosophy than engineering. Pure html, css, and javascript will probably be runnable in 1000 years. Today's fashionable WYSIWYG site or blog generator, maybe not. I like the idea that my blog, which is not very special today, could somehow become a historical artifact in the future. Vain? Sure... But crazier things have happened! I was planning to commend this approach to others after finishing my redesign. At least, until I spent half a day reformatting the old markdown posts into html. What a waste of time!