Yeah, that's quite similar with my experience. The idea is really nice and when it works, it's great. But debugging those GraphQL queries without any intellisense and writing monstrous config files eg gatsby-node.js makes me wish for something better.
I understand that because the API gets so complicated it's better to use something flexible like GraphQL. But the magic breaks down too easily in places and then you end up trying to fix some really peculiar bug (I had one where you had to put blank .eslintrc to the root to prevent the linter from linting local linked npm libraries).
I think parts of Gatsby core should probably be rewritten or done in different language to make it faster. The compilation shouldn't take that long. But I'm not sure what are the remedies for the other problems. Maybe if they focused really hard to simplify the library into its very basics, following the Unix philosophy, it could help with the creeping complexity headache that Gatsby brings.
I understand that because the API gets so complicated it's better to use something flexible like GraphQL. But the magic breaks down too easily in places and then you end up trying to fix some really peculiar bug (I had one where you had to put blank .eslintrc to the root to prevent the linter from linting local linked npm libraries).
I think parts of Gatsby core should probably be rewritten or done in different language to make it faster. The compilation shouldn't take that long. But I'm not sure what are the remedies for the other problems. Maybe if they focused really hard to simplify the library into its very basics, following the Unix philosophy, it could help with the creeping complexity headache that Gatsby brings.