These would be great interview questions! "So, you've been doing CSS since 1999. Please tell me how the width/height of a box is calculated?"
Me: "In which browser?"
Things I wish I’d known about CSS
131–140 of 340 posts
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#132That is really useful. I have been writing small html front-ends since 2008-09. HTML5,CSS3 made many things easier like gradients, Round borders, and many things that now developer do takes as granted. I clearly remember, how boring and frustrating it was to slice borders and corners from photoshop psd. CSS3 and HTML5 made many good changes, but new css feature like grid, Flex-box all are still confusing. I have to l…
I felt the totally opposite about grid. I spent a little time learning it, and now EVERYTHING is easy (except for things that aren't, of course)
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#133Earlier 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.
I know the difference to the cost of living in the US in silicon valley, of course not everyone lives in areas like that. But I'm talking from the employer side, not the employee and why they would employ US devs who cost twice as much
The employer pays roughly the same amount. It's just that the employee sees much less in Europe due to all the taxes.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#134Useful article. Getting started with CSS must be harder these days than it was 15-20 years ago. Not only for mobile-friendliness, but also because of the coexistence of flexbox/grid/traditional layouts. I'm wondering if the standard will ever been simplified, instead of being added more and more features.
Just use flexbox (and grid if you need to control both dimensions at once). You can ignore all of the old ways of doing layout. Flexbox is supported back to IE11.
As an occasional CSS user, I second that. Every time I have had to use CSS for anything more complicated than diddling item appearance has led to a lot of time on Stack Overflow trying to find answers to questions like "why did my height change work on this element but not that element?" or "how can I center this text vertically in this space?".
I don't use CSS frequently enough to not forget these things by the next time I need it.
I'll still probably forget parts of Flexbox between the times I need to use CSS, but it will be things like forgetting like what spacing modes are available, which is easy to quickly look up.
Flexbox is now my turtle [1]. Well flexbox and grid.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#135Yikes. 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…
I think this is a culture problem in fornt end dev in general. Front end devs learn frameworks, not technologies. It's very much focused on getting started as quick as possible instead of taking the time to read and understand the tech they are working with. Even though, as your story shows, you can get things done quicker when you know what's going on.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#136Earlier 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.
Yes, This is the main difference. In Germany the education is free and medical insurance not something to worry about ( I have no idea about what deductables, deletables etc mean). This is where the difference lies.
Deductable is a scary word but a simple concept, it represents the amount of money you must pay before your insurance begins to pay bills for you :)
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Six figures? In the US? Sometimes I wonder why companies even pay developers so much in the US. I'm a specialised medical embedded software developer in the UK and I'm not even halfway to six figures, and will likely never hit it. It astounds me that companies don't hire twice as many non-US developers for the same price and get more work for their money. Note, I'm not talking about outsourcing to the absolute cheape…
Serious questions. Which countries would you suggest for this? Just the UK?
The only European countries where costs are as high as the US for tech salaries are basically Switzerland and Norway. In the rest of Europe you have access to a very qualified workforce for less money. But they also have more protection than in the US (fewer unpaid hours, more holidays, no cheap dismissal…).
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#138If you're looking for world-class CSS knowledge, start with https://every-layout.dev ; if you build UI for a living and haven't encountered axiomatic css and layout primitives, they're likely to change your world.
To save clicks, it's $100, just covers page layouts.
That's a radically misleading comment. It covers much more than layout, and the free content on the site is incredibly helpful and compelling. The full version more than justifies its price. And they offer it for free to students or anyone else for whom the cost is a problem (relying on the honor system).
It's far and away the best resource on CSS I've encountered in my 22-year career working with web technology for a living.
No affiliation, just a grateful patron.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
For context: I'm an American who's currently working as a software engineer in France (for a French company). I agree that engineering salaries are much higher in the US than in Europe and other non-US countries, however it's worth considering that there are additional expenses to hiring in other countries. My french salary is ~30-40% lower than I was making in the US. However, my cost to my employer is nearly as hig…
Here is an official simulator for France: https://mon-entreprise.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-net It's not 100% accurate (the exact amounts depend on many variables) but gives a good idea. For example, a cost to the employer of USD 100k (87460€/year) gives a before-taxes salary of USD 70.5k, and a salary after all taxes of USD 47k.
> 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.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an official simulator for France: https://mon-entreprise.fr/simulateurs/salaire-brut-net It's not 100% accurate (the exact amounts depend on many variables) but gives a good idea. For example, a cost to the employer of USD 100k (87460€/year) gives a before-taxes salary of USD 70.5k, and a salary after all taxes of USD 47k.
> 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 in life (education, health, basic retirement…).