But... but why?
tl;dr:
Zach Leatherman made me do it.
free side project idea: HTML-only static site generated clock that deploys a new version to @netlify every minute
That was then, this is now
Prompted by that idea by Zach, I made this site as a demonstration of how frictionless and risk-free regular automated deployments could be. It automatically redeployed every minute of every day. It has been a helpful resource for demonstrations. But as the site shows, time moves on.
Edge Handlers have brought an easier and less wasteful way to do this. By modifying HTTP responses on the fly to provide dynamic content, we don't need to redeploy every minute to make a server-generated clock! And the likes of Netlify's CI/CD and automated deploys have become far more accepted as the norm, so there is less need to make this point.
Localised and modified on demand
Now the time you see on this site has been rendered on demand by an Edge Function. Edge Functions offer a very low latency serverless runtime at a location on the CDN geographically close to the requesting user. Very handy and still without the need to manage and maintain a server. It's just a function.
I miss the old way
Me too. It was a bit of fun. But it was wasteful to keep it alive forever for a demo.