Building a cyberpunk placeholder text generator

Gibson Ipsum is a side project I started in order to dip my foot into JavaScript application frameworks, specifically Vue.js. I also wanted something to try out a functional or “atomic” CSS methodology, Tachyons in this case.

Vue.js was a pleasure to use, and Tachyons was a game-changer for me in writing CSS (although these days I’d reach for Tailwind CSS) but the exploration didn’t stop there.

The list of words is stored in a headless CMS — Contentful — where each word includes properties such as what kind of word it is, the definition if it’s an abbreviation, and the Japanese form of the word if there is one. This enabled toggling the format of Japanese words without regenerating the whole block of text.

Sure this could have been an array of strings and a few Math.rand() calls, but where’s the fun in that?