Gatsby is a modern web framework for React that enables developers to build fast, secure, and powerful websites and applications. It’s a static site generator at its core, but it’s also much more than that. Gatsby leverages React’s component architecture, GraphQL for data management, and Webpack for bundling. It’s optimized for speed with code splitting, image optimization, inlined critical styles, lazy-loading, and more.

Learning Gatsby involves understanding how to use its rich set of APIs and starters to bootstrap projects, and how to source data from virtually anywhere: Markdown files, a headless CMS, or REST APIs. The framework’s plugin ecosystem allows for extending functionality and integrating with various platforms and services with ease. Through Gatsby, developers can create static pages that are dynamic in nature, offering a blend of the benefits of static site generation and client-side rendering.