The introduction of Gatsby JS was a thrilling time. Writing React apps, handling data fetching, caching, and bundling could be time consuming. Gatsby came along and provided a huge leap forward in productivity at the time.

GraphQL data fetching, Static Site Generation allowed me to create highly performant and SEO optimised sites, especially with e-commerce sites.

The Data Graph, or being able to fetch data from multiple CMS, markdown or e-commerce sources simultaneously is a great functional tool as a developer.

Gatsby was not without its headaches, and has become less popular over time for a few reasons (mainly competition from Next and other frameworks and ecosystem support), it pushed the boundary forward and showed how the React and headless cms approach, or JAMstack, was not only viable but fun to work with.