Things I wish I’d known about CSS • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#141

Post by theelous3 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #126

It always helped me to do an absolute basic concepts course on a new technology I learn. Like, sure I can play around in Photoshop or Eclipse or CSS or JavaScript and find most things. But a good 101 course is worth so much saved time. Most of the stuff in that article was mentioned in a CSS box model course I did 10 years ago. People were always baffled how I learned all this. Well, I read the docs! They always assu…

Cobbler here, currently cobbling a frontend (am a backend dev by trade).

The issue for me is the format these courses and resources take. CSS is the most jam packed with non-intuitive technology I've met. How many dozens of pages or segments of video would I have to go through in a course to learn what the author in OP summarised in two or three sentences? Any time I've considered the structured approach for something like CSS, the material drones on and on with technically correct explanations and example code, but somehow against the odds, almost nothing of substance.

Worse yet are the top google result reference resources. Look no further than the top result for "css grid" if you're in the mood to claw your brain from its stem, and flush it down the toilet.

Link: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/

Behold, 8 zillion words and symbols across 7 trillion seemingly randomly organised boxes full of both all of the information, and simultaneously none of the information, about css grids.

Which brings me to where I am now, cobbling. It's more effective for me to cobble, than to spend an entire day figuring out css grids "the right way". If the going gets tough I'll just use some grid tool, or look up some sandbox examples, and be on my way.

If there was more material like the OP, and someone organised it well, well, I'd actually get around to learning it rather than cobbling. It's the best bit of writing I've ever seen on CSS. This is shocking. Not that there is anything wrong with the writing, but it's very, very simple. What on earth have all of the other CSS wizards with basic writing skills been doing? Confusing the issue, that's what.

Which leads me to a sort of meta frustration with learning CSS. I know it's not hard, I know that if someone just wrote about it even half decently it would take only a moment to digest each concept, but watching learner-disconnected authors create resources I can tell have lost sight of what it's like to learn, turns me off.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#142

Post by chrisweekly » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #58

Kiro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ; in your link sends me to about:blank#blocked.

For the benefit of others: https://every-layout.dev

Thanks! Wish I'd caught it in time to fix my 1st comment.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#143

Post by dahfizz » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

benhurmarcel wrote: post #140

dahfizz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before-taxes salary of USD 70.5k, and a salary after all taxes of USD 47k. What!? That's over 30% of your income gone, and for a relatively average income. That's not even counting VAT and other taxes.... No wonder there's so much "free" stuff in Europe.

€61k before taxes isn't really a relatively average income in France. A junior engineer (with a Masters) starts around €35k ($40k) before-taxes. Country-wide median salary is €28k ($32k). But across all those salaries it doesn't change the fact that around 45~55% of the employer's cost isn't going to the employee. And yes, taxes and cotisations are very high. On the other hand they cover most higher costs and risks i…

Isn't $70.5k USD around €61k EUR?

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#144

Post by LocalPCGuy » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

miiiiiike wrote: post #65

jb1991 wrote: post #31

Yikes. I've been earning 6 figures as of about two years ago doing mostly HTML and CSS UI design for a bank. And I still did not know about many of these! I guess they are things I wish I'd known about CSS! Better late than never I guess.

I've never been happy with a front-end dev that I've paid six-figures to. I once paid a senior front-end engineer far too much to do a fairly involved layout. Three months, an uncountable number of bugs, and one unusable tangle of Sass later I pulled the plug and swore off ever hiring a "CSS Person" again. I took the Linus+Git approach and said "I'm not writing another line of Python until I understand CSS." After a…

Front end development is a craft, just like other crafts. People need to treat it seriously if they expect to be taken seriously and be paid accordingly. (BTW, if you still haven't met a FE dev who's ever read a book on CSS, you have now. I own quite a few AND have read them.)

I also think a lot of the value from a front end developer comes from their ability to merge the technical requirements with a designer's vision, and produce a product that is at the same time usable, accessible and (bare minimum) meets the technical requirements.

Not going to touch the CSS Grid except for two quick comments:

- they absolutely should have been keeping up with CSS Grid, where it was at, and when it was usable and when it isn't

- it is still an open question, because although the overall numbers should 90+% available in browsers, you have to check your own stats. For example, the stuff I work on is often used in Enterprise environments, so IE11 is a requirement (yes, we know our numbers, it is, it could literally cost us 6 figure sales if we don't have support for it). We are using CSS Grid, but we have to be very careful what we use it for and to test those uses in IE to make sure the old Grid spec in IE supports the things we do it with. Otherwise it's back to Flex or other layout techniques. It's not a silver bullet, but I also recognize that is becoming a more unique example these days.

Those are the kinds of things a good FE dev should know though, IMO, and be able to articulate.

Plus, FE devs also need to know HTML and semantics, accessibility, and of course, Javascript. When you can put that all together along with the skills earlier re: usability and accessibility, then you can justify the higher salary brackets.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#145

Post by benhurmarcel » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #143

benhurmarcel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

€61k before taxes isn't really a relatively average income in France. A junior engineer (with a Masters) starts around €35k ($40k) before-taxes. Country-wide median salary is €28k ($32k). But across all those salaries it doesn't change the fact that around 45~55% of the employer's cost isn't going to the employee. And yes, taxes and cotisations are very high. On the other hand they cover most higher costs and risks i…

Isn't $70.5k USD around €61k EUR?

You're right, I mixed up. I edit it.

Still, €61k isn't an average salary. An engineer reaches that after about 10-15 years (from personal experience and some statistics I have access to). It's double the national median.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#146

Post by nanna » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #129

nanna wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be underestimating the fact that many people have been writing CSS for well over a decade now, and that it has evolved considerably since they first read a web development tutorial. If you've not been paying close attention (or not been able to), there are many things that will have passed you by. It's a blessing to learn css fresh today, in as much as it's a curse to still have practices from ten yea…

> and that it has evolved considerably GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all, and are old (over two decades), simple, and common enough to be considered basic knowledge. I had the same reaction to those and one or two others. Now if this was someone relatively new to CSS I'd understand, but the opening paragraph establishes how long this person was around. Padding-vs-margin in particular was necess…

> GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all

Doesn't read that way to me:

> These are things that you learn in a first week of doing web development tutorials.

Sure, padding vs margin isn't exactly new, however `display: inline-block`, ::before and ::after, rem, ch, and :nth-child() certainly weren't in the old html4/xhtml and css2 guidebook that got me into web development!

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#147

Post by k__ » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

theelous3 wrote: post #141

k__ wrote: post #126

It always helped me to do an absolute basic concepts course on a new technology I learn. Like, sure I can play around in Photoshop or Eclipse or CSS or JavaScript and find most things. But a good 101 course is worth so much saved time. Most of the stuff in that article was mentioned in a CSS box model course I did 10 years ago. People were always baffled how I learned all this. Well, I read the docs! They always assu…

Cobbler here, currently cobbling a frontend (am a backend dev by trade). The issue for me is the format these courses and resources take. CSS is the most jam packed with non-intuitive technology I've met. How many dozens of pages or segments of video would I have to go through in a course to learn what the author in OP summarised in two or three sentences? Any time I've considered the structured approach for somethin…

Yes, web technology is overloaded, because of the history, backwards compatible stuff etc. pp.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#148

Post by vraylle » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

gorgoiler wrote: post #63

It feels like HTML and CSS could be useful for print layout, but I’ve rarely seen a high quality PDF renderer. I know Atom’s markdown preview uses headless chrome under the hood. These are hugely heavyweight tools but the output is very high quality. Are there any other recommended tools for going an HTML route, for typesetting? I’d much rather design pages that way than use InDesign, PDF scripting, or TeX.

We use WKHTMLTOPDF (https://wkhtmltopdf.org/). In our case it's in the Rotativa package (.NET MVC). There are a few caveats; it uses an older headless WebKit engine that doesn't support everything. We use the QT Web Browser (http://www.qtweb.net) to test/debug when needed. We do design pages to be specific "paper" sizes and lean on SVG a lot for anything fancy. We have some JS that breaks long tables into multiple tables, etc. But the resulting output looks flawless.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#149

Post by nanna » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

nanna wrote: post #146

Izkata wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that it has evolved considerably GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all, and are old (over two decades), simple, and common enough to be considered basic knowledge. I had the same reaction to those and one or two others. Now if this was someone relatively new to CSS I'd understand, but the opening paragraph establishes how long this person was around. Padding-vs-margin in particular was necess…

> GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all Doesn't read that way to me: > These are things that you learn in a first week of doing web development tutorials. Sure, padding vs margin isn't exactly new, however `display: inline-block`, ::before and ::after, rem, ch, and :nth-child() certainly weren't in the old html4/xhtml and css2 guidebook that got me into web development!

To add, I think another post by the same poster on this HN post proves the point that they're not dismissing individual parts, but rather disputing (or sorry but trolling) the article as a whole:

> I think (hope, really) that gp is just one heavy "/s". The knowledge presented in the article is so basic that it is hard to believe that a person who does html for two years and six figures doesn't know these. As for the article, I fail to see any reason for it to exist beyond cheap media presence. Or maybe I should start a blog, because I'm not even halfway too.

Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS

#150

Post by speedgoose » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

amINeolib wrote: post #113

speedgoose wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US salaries in IT are huge, but you need to take into account that they have to pay a lot to have a quality of life comparable to what a minimum wage worker is getting in west Europe. If you have a few kids, I would bet you are not that bad in UK with one fewer digit.

In the United States, you can spend 6k on health insurance and 12k out of pocket for unlimited family health care. So as long as a US job pays 18k more, it's pretty similar. People talk about vacation, but my job pays so much I'll take months off between contracts. (Engineering) Also it's hard to compare lifestyles in the US vs Europe. Homes in the US are gigantic, often newish, and have Air Conditioning. Cars in the…

I'm sure in terms of money, working in the US as an IT person is a good deal.

But you have to think not only about you but also the others. I don't know whether you have children or grandchildren , but if you do I'm sure knowing that they will never have a bad situation is pretty nice. You can't expect all your children and grandchildren to have a well paid job and you can't finance all of them forever.