You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
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You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
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Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#2(2022)
You've turned your/rriepe's substack series (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=yousuckatcss.substack...) into a book? Or actually maybe it's the other way around (based on rriepe's profile[0])
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#3> The last big driver of time-wasting in CSS is the drive for pixel perfection
I agree. Also users/product managers do not care. They will see UI that is a little bit “off” and think negatively about your brand. Congrats, now you have a ticket to make the UI look pixel perfect.
I suppose the audience for this isn’t people who actually get paid to write CSS, but instead casual blog writers. It’s definitely ok and normal to have little blips on your side project.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#4(2022) You've turned your/rriepe's substack series ( https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=yousuckatcss.substack... ) into a book? Or actually maybe it's the other way around (based on rriepe's profile[0]) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rriepe
Edited the year into the title. CASS (the CSS library) and YSAC (this book) have been a huge marketing mess, to be honest. And yeah the substack was part of it-- I think the book came first though. Kyle Yeats (rhymes with stylesheets) was going to be a Youtube persona but I could never really get the feel of it right.
The book morphed into being more about project management. I think there's a lot of value in it still, in that respect, so I'm putting it all online for free.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#5> The last big driver of time-wasting in CSS is the drive for pixel perfection I agree. Also users/product managers do not care. They will see UI that is a little bit “off” and think negatively about your brand. Congrats, now you have a ticket to make the UI look pixel perfect. I suppose the audience for this isn’t people who actually get paid to write CSS, but instead casual blog writers. It’s definitely ok and norm…
It's amazing how much the initial intent of the web has been perverted. Not all for the worse, but still.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#6I detest writing CSS and HTML. I just find it boring fiddly and annoying. I have started doing "vibe" coding with LLM's. Giving a decent prompt produces results that are... pretty good.
Almost 100% in lighthouse for both mobile and desktop, responsive, reusable components, dark/light mode and a design that was better than I could do in the 2-3 hours I spent doing it (while sipping wine).
I know its not a solution for everyone, and probably won't work for the prettier designs out there, but you can go a long way with these tools this day.
I know there is a reluctance to not use LLM's for code tasks, and I am one of the largest critics, but for me this solves a real pain point. I don't want to write CSS/HTML anymore and these tools do a good enough job of it that I don't have to.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#7> The last big driver of time-wasting in CSS is the drive for pixel perfection I agree. Also users/product managers do not care. They will see UI that is a little bit “off” and think negatively about your brand. Congrats, now you have a ticket to make the UI look pixel perfect. I suppose the audience for this isn’t people who actually get paid to write CSS, but instead casual blog writers. It’s definitely ok and norm…
The perfection should be downstream of the project's coded standards, not downstream of the faithful implementation of the designer's work. Some designers are really good about maintaining standards-- but the book would argue all that effort should be spent elsewhere.
It's basically "the arbitrary padding the designer liked in the moment" vs. "the standard padding that's everywhere in the project." This book argues you should always use the standard padding. Your product should be pixel-perfect, just not in the PSD-to-HTML sense.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#8I never got very good with CSS or HTML styling. I know enough to generally fix obvious stuff, but I'm kind of a luddite and still use Bootstrap for most of my stuff. I've mostly stopped doing web stuff, so the only time I touch CSS is when I'm doing an admin screen or something, so it doesn't have to look great.
Still, a part of me wonders how different my life would be if I had taken to frontend programming enough to make things that look nice. It's not like there isn't anything enjoyable about it, I just ended up taking to backend distributed systems work a bit sooner.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#9Tell that to a decent number of people I have worked with over the past 20 years. In fact, I know people to this day who have been writing CSS for decades who don't really know fundamental things like specificity, inheritance, or the cascade. Pattern matching into the sunset, not a single fundamental piece of CSS specifications ever internalized, still getting paid (its okay).
https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/specs.en.html
You can read this and know most things about CSS. For a bit anyway. You'll forget things you don't use. You might remember them again one day.
Re: You suck at CSS and that's okay (2022)
#10I detest writing CSS and HTML. I just find it boring fiddly and annoying. I have started doing "vibe" coding with LLM's. Giving a decent prompt produces results that are... pretty good. Almost 100% in lighthouse for both mobile and desktop, responsive, reusable components, dark/light mode and a design that was better than I could do in the 2-3 hours I spent doing it (while sipping wine). I know its not a solution for…
I agree. CASS (the library this book was promoting) is actually really great paired with LLMs. If I revisit this project, it'll be along the lines of using it with LLMs.