Zach Leatherman, creator of 11ty, discusses the move to independence in 2024. Topics include challenges of open source sustainability, community support, and reflections on organizing a conference. Insightful discussions on balancing financial incentives, evolution of JavaScript technologies, and humorous web development projects.
Transitioning 11ty to independence for sustainability with community support.
Utilizing web components for minimalist and versatile front-end development.
Importance of supporting indie creators like Zach and the 11ty project.
Deep dives
Clerk: A Comprehensive User Management Platform with Embedded UIs and Flexible APIs
Clerk is a robust user management platform designed for React and Next.js users, providing embeddable UIs, flexible APIs, and an admin dashboard for streamlined user authentication. Inspired by Stripe Checkout, Clerk offers a polished and professional authentication experience out of the box, including essential features like user profiles and two-factor authentication setup.
Maintaining Independence and Sustainability: The Journey of 11D Site Generator
11D, a static site generator, offers a streamlined and beginner-friendly experience for building websites emphasizing build performance and configurability. Creator Zach Leatherman's transition from full-time roles at Netlify and Cloud Cannon to funding 11D independently reflects a move towards sustainability and community-driven support. With fundraising initiatives and a strategic product development approach, the future focus is on self-sustainability while maintaining the open-source essence of 11D.
Web Components: Simplifying Interactivity with Structured Components
Embracing web components for front-end development, Zach Leatherman focuses on building minimalist, design-free components for maximum reusability and adaptability across various projects and design systems. Notable web components like Lend, Squirminal, and Seven Minute Tabs showcase Leatherman's commitment to simplifying interactivity on websites while ensuring long-term usability and versatility.
The Future of APIs and Developer Experience
The podcast episode discusses the changing landscape of APIs and developer experience. Saggar, the co-founder of SpeakEasy, expresses excitement about APIs, highlighting the shift towards more enhanced developer experiences. The conversation emphasizes the importance of creating long-lasting infrastructure through high-quality APIs, drawing inspiration from successful examples like Stripe. Teams using SpeakEasy prioritize solid open API documentation and trust the tool to generate SDKs hands-off, streamlining the process and ensuring consistent code updates with minimal manual intervention.
Supporting Open Source and Independent Creators
The discussion delves into the importance of supporting indie creators like Zach and the 11D project. Zach emphasizes the significance of recurring contributions to maintain 11D's sustainability, aiming to reach a target of 6,000 in monthly sponsorships. Encouraging both existing and new users to engage with 11D, Zach advocates for building projects from scratch for better understanding and long-term maintenance. The podcast underscores the value of backing open source creators and embracing independent projects within the web development community.
11ty creator Zach Leatherman is taking the open source site generator fully independent in 2024 and he’s back on the pod to tell us why, how & what we all can do to help.
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Sponsors:
Clerk – Clerk is a complete suite of embeddable UIs, flexible APIs, and admin dashboards to authenticate and manage your users.
Neon – The fully managed serverless Postgres with a generous free tier. Neon separates storage and compute to offer autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage.
Speakeasy – Production-ready, Enterprise-resilient, best-in-class SDKs crafted in minutes. Speakeasy takes care of the entire SDK workflow to save you significant time, delivering SDKs to your customers in minutes with just a few clicks! Create your first SDK for free!
