Comparing Blogging Tools
I love writing. Among all the ways to express my thoughts, writing stands out as one of the best — it minimizes misunderstandings when communicating, and it places few constraints on when, where, or how you work. From the moment we learn the alphabet, we are taught to write "our own words" through the medium of a diary, and those diary entries accumulate page by page. Yet in Korea, once middle school begins, no one compels you to write anymore. For the next six formative years, education skews heavily toward memorization and reading. Inevitably, most people grow out of the habit of writing, and their communication becomes noticeably weak in everything except reading — speaking, listening, and writing all fall by the wayside.
Back in high school, I wanted to keep recording my thoughts in a blog rather than on Cyworld or other social platforms. My very first blog was a Naver blog. At the time, the differences between tools or how well content could be searched didn't matter much to me. As time passed, though, posts accumulated, and I found myself using more and more tools — until the limitations of the Naver platform began to feel suffocating. That drove me to try Tistory, Brunch, and WordPress, and eventually I landed on GitHub Pages powered by Jekyll. Oh, and somewhere along the way I also hand-built my own blog using the Python web framework Django, stitching it together one piece at a time.
Below is what I consider one of Jekyll's greatest strengths as a developer blog platform.
def print_hi(name)
puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.
Code can be syntax-highlighted just like writing in an IDE — effortlessly and elegantly.
When I posted code on Naver, I had to take a screenshot and upload the image. I never tried code blocks on Tistory, Brunch, or WordPress, but from what I looked up, Tistory's process is cumbersome, Brunch doesn't appear to support it natively, and WordPress requires a plugin. As I've been spending more time with computers lately and communicating increasingly in code, I've been searching for a platform that handles code publishing well. Jekyll looks like a strong candidate, and I'm in the middle of putting it to the test. The fact that publishing a post on a Jekyll blog is essentially equivalent to a git commit is, frankly, thrilling!
The other blogging tools I currently use are listed below. Naver Blog Brunch WordPress Blog