I have always believed that a developer’s portfolio should say something about who they are before a single line of code is read. It is not a resume. It is a statement of taste, values, and craft. This site is mine.
Why a Static Site Generator in Go?
Most developers reach for Next.js, Astro, or some JavaScript framework when building a personal site. I wanted something different. Something that reflected what I actually care about: simplicity, performance, and minimal dependencies.
Go is fast. The html/template package is robust. And generating static files means zero runtime overhead. No client-side hydration. No bundle size anxiety. Just clean HTML and CSS served directly from a CDN.
The entire generator is a single Go program that reads YAML content files, parses templates, and writes HTML to disk. It runs in milliseconds.
Design Decisions
Dark Mode by Default
I spend most of my time in terminals and dark-themed editors. A blinding white portfolio feels foreign. The palette here is intentionally restrained: deep near-black backgrounds, soft off-white text, and muted grays for hierarchy. No accent colors. No distractions.
Minimalism as Constraint
Every element on this site exists because it needs to. There are no animated particles, no scroll-jacking, no cookie banners. The constraint forces clarity. If something does not serve the content, it does not belong.
Content as Data
All content lives in YAML files. My projects, books, work history, and even this blog post are separate from the presentation layer. This means I can update my experience or add a new project by editing a text file and pushing to GitHub. The site rebuilds automatically.
What I Learned
Building the generator taught me more about Go’s template system than any tutorial. The block and define patterns for layout inheritance are elegant once you understand them. I also gained respect for the sheer amount of complexity modern frontend frameworks abstract away — and questioned whether that complexity is always necessary.
What’s Next
This site will evolve. I plan to write about distributed systems, Go concurrency patterns, and lessons from my transition from .NET to Go. The architecture supports it: new blog posts are just Markdown files. The generator handles the rest.
If you are reading this and considering building your own site from scratch, my advice is simple: start with static files. Understand the foundation. Add complexity only when the problem demands it.
Thanks for visiting.