I saw some note in the referenced blog post about that other static site generator (Lola?) where one of the key points was that the maintainer refused to add a given feature because it would add complexity.
The features I add to Hugo or the bugs I fixes, those are stuff that I need fixed. There are certain things I find interesting on the technical level, but mostly it’s because I need it. That is egoism more than anything.
And you may argue that some of the features added to Hugo has added some complexity, but that’s because some projects require more than the basics. If Hugo didnt’t have a solid support for TailwindCSS and JS bundling etc., then I would not use it. And if I wasn’t using it, I would not maintain it and spend time here answering questions.
And I would claim that lots of the building blocks added recently (modules, unified file system with fairly powerful mount support etc., pretty great error messages (even in browser)…) is helping with the simplicity. They may look complex in all the details, but surely simpler if we had a better story for solid starters and themes and documentation. We certainly have a much greater potential for simplicity than many of the JS alternatives, which I think is much better at this (starters and documentation) than us.
And to those complaining about this forum, I suggest you take a spin reading some Reddit threads. No forum is perfect, but I find this forum to be refreshingly helpful and responsive and mostly polite and respectful.