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Hell Yes CSS

wizardzines.com

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Re: Hell Yes CSS

#31

Post by divbzero »

tephra wrote: post #29
tachyonbeam wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure someone will come and say they disagree, but I find CSS extremely unintuitive as well. The primitives it has compose very poorly. There are too many ways to do the same thing, each with their own weird quirks. Sometimes it's really hard to get it to render something simple. I mean... Just centering something on the screen is needlessly complicated. I wish CSS was more like a programming language, with a mini…

I agree with your comment mostly but just to note that it is no longer complicated to center things. .centered { display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center; } Indeed there are two (at least) more ways to both horizontally and vertically center something (using CSS Grid and the good old translate(-50%, -50%)) and with flex I always have a hard time remembering if it is justify-items or justify-content…

I’m chuckling because (a) parent is right that it’s easier than before, and (b) grandparent is right that it’s still infuriatingly obscure to anyone not fluent in CSS.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#32

Post by not_knuth »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #14
gscott wrote: post #12

I paid $60 to a guy on Fiverr to do css for me just a few days ago. I should have been able to do it myself but after fooling with it for awhile I gave up.

I'm sure someone will come and say they disagree, but I find CSS extremely unintuitive as well. The primitives it has compose very poorly. There are too many ways to do the same thing, each with their own weird quirks. Sometimes it's really hard to get it to render something simple. I mean... Just centering something on the screen is needlessly complicated. I wish CSS was more like a programming language, with a mini…

Well, CSS is pretty old, and as such old, backwards-compatible specs do, it's utterly bloated. I tend to use CSS Grid and Flex almost exclusively, since they are a lot more intuitive than the block and inline combo.

But then again if you look at the origin of CSS, it all makes sense. CSS was never developed to be used for app-like interfaces. At it's inception, it was intended as a style sheet for documents (specifically scientific documents). The original idea was that everybody would have their own CSS which they could then apply to HTML locally. Interestingly, 30 years later, HTML and CSS are used for almost anything but scientific documents and nobody uses a personal style sheet.

The technology is really not well suited for the cases it is most often used for today and there is a superb blog post on the topic that has featured several times on HN:

The Blog Post: https://eager.io/blog/the-languages-which-almost-were-css/

HN 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11994405

HN only 4 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24118151

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#33

Post by brundolf »

I wrote a (much shorter) article in a similar vein a few years ago: https://css-tricks.com/css-is-awesome/

I find it fascinating (saddening, but fascinating) that so many programmers are so turned-off by CSS and find it so unintuitive. I almost want to set out on a research project to figure out why that is. My experience with it couldn't be more different.

Here's one way of looking at CSS (which I didn't think of until just now): CSS is not a language you build something up out of. It's more like you're carefully taming a wild horse, or pruning a plant. You have to embrace the natural movement of the thing, and strategically redirect it only where necessary. If you come in with the mindset of constructing the world from scratch (which works in most programming languages), you're just going to be fighting the beast the whole way, and you're going to lose.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#36

Post by ianbooker »

brundolf wrote: post #33

I wrote a (much shorter) article in a similar vein a few years ago: https://css-tricks.com/css-is-awesome/ I find it fascinating (saddening, but fascinating) that so many programmers are so turned-off by CSS and find it so unintuitive. I almost want to set out on a research project to figure out why that is. My experience with it couldn't be more different. Here's one way of looking at CSS (which I didn't think of un…

CSS has a fundamentally different cognitive kalkül. You can do things fast, but if you do not have a deeper understanding, it can get pretty frustrating. At least historically.

It is like asking a Python programmer to write Prolog. Anyone can write Prolog, but only if you are willing to learn. The difference is: Prolog is an optional choice for most, CSS is a must for certain applications..

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#37

Post by systemvoltage »

cheshire_cat wrote: post #28
yashap wrote: post #25

So, I’m an experienced backend dev, who only occasionally dabbles in frontend. And whenever I do, my CSS experience is basically: https://media1.giphy.com/media/13FrpeVH09Zrb2/giphy.gif I’d like to fix that, and learn CSS well. I’m not looking for a quick zine like this, more of an in-depth course, say roughly 5-10 hrs. Ideally free, but I’d pay if it’s good. Anyone have any favourites?

Someone else recommended https://every-layout.dev/ last week in another thread. Not sure how in-depth it is, since I haven't bought it (yet).

I do not recommend this (despite of how cool it looks). It is using algorithmic aspects of CSS which is not what it was designed for. These aspects were added later on in CSS3+.

Learn the basics of CSS first. Even after then, it is hard to recommend this Every-Layout approach.

Re: Hell Yes CSS

#40

Post by strenholme »

I’m just glad we’re no longer in the IE6 days where getting something as simple as a stable three-column pure CSS layout was a nay-to-impossible challenge.

IE9 was probably the first version of IE with decent CSS (read ”display: table” which wasn’t broken); all of the other browsers (which didn’t have IE9’s market share at the time) had already added “display: table” support.

Before “display: table” was widely supported, people would either mix CSS with a layout, or have a fixed width (usually) single column design.

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