CSS is such a weird abstraction. Who thinks in blocks and inline blocks? Who thinks in paddings and margins? Floats, etc? I know these are more flexible, but I've always found grid-based frameworks to be far more intuitive
Things I wish I’d known about CSS
181–190 of 340 posts
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sometimes I wonder why companies even pay developers so much in the US. Presenteeism. The office "has to" be in Silicon Valley. The employees "have to" be in that office, in an open plan, so the manager can physically see them working. Therefore they have to be paid huge wages to compete against the other employers doing the same.
Maybe it's a stereotype, but my Engineering counterparts in Europe were apathetic/lazy. Might have been a few bad Apples.
When they are taxed to death on lower base wager, it is expected some to be apathetic. The saying is "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work".
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#183Earlier 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…
Sometimes I wonder why companies even pay developers so much in the US. It boils down to real estate prices combined with some companies really really really wanting those people to be on site. I had my highest rate ever during a brief, beautiful moment in Switzerland where a studio apartment costs ~$2000 per month. I choose to think that this rate is how much our work is actually worth - otherwise those companies co…
This is a catch 22, high wages make the rent increase (demand and offer) and high rents demand high salaries, it's a spiral going to a bubble.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#184CSS is such a weird abstraction. Who thinks in blocks and inline blocks? Who thinks in paddings and margins? Floats, etc? I know these are more flexible, but I've always found grid-based frameworks to be far more intuitive
You can construct a grid based system based on a block system, but wouldn't the reverse be much more difficult?
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now, admittedly I'm a skeptic of unions by default (in my view they're mostly just another layer of bureaucracy/waste), but isn't unionization of tech workers in the US the quickest way to make themselves even less desirable? Why hire a US union member when you can hire an Eastern European who both works for peanuts and doesn't have union hang-ups? (Admittedly outsourcing has its own problems, especially when there a…
EU has very strong employee rights, so that will come to the same point as a union in the US. The lower pay is an advantage but the time zone difference of 8-12 hours can be a disadvantage. There are no language barriers in IT between the US and Europe, by the time they graduate college the average European has gone through more than a decade of English courses. Cultural differences are minor, management style is ver…
There are some phenomenal outsourced shops in EE. Those that do pay 2-4 higher the going rate in the country. These aren't wordpress sweatshops. These are usually small teams and people work on interesting,specialised projects. Management style is usually very pragmatic ( a means a and let's cut the crap) .But the best part about these is that people do get exposed to things,build experience and eventually start on their own. 10-15 years ago there was hardly any product driven company in my country.Now the ones most worth working for do have successful software product that are sold in western markets.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#186Earlier 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.
For fun, here are the figures for Croatia (yearly take-home salary and total cost for employer, all in USD for easier comparison):
Average salary (take-home): $11874
Average salary (total cost for employer): $19875
Median salary (take-home): $10225
Median salary (total cost for employer): $16526
Starting junior dev salary (take-home): $14800
Starting junior dev salary (total cost for employer): $25800
Senior dev salary (they can go higher, but that's relatively rare for local employers) (take-home): $27700
Senior dev salary (total cost for employer): $52000
VAT is 25%. Safety net is a joke. Health care is universal, but not that good. Education is mediocre at best.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#187> Using pixels (px) is tempting because they’re simple to understand: declare font-size: 24px and the text will be 24px. But that won’t provide a great user experience, particularly for users who resize content at the browser level or zoom into content. Pixels (px) in CSS are relative as well, and scale with zoom. What is the benefit of em/rem?
"Relative" and "Absolute" have their own definitions and by that definition "px" is indeed an absolute unit.
Not anymore, as most px units now is based on a reference px, a size determined based on screen density and viewing distance. That's why something rendered at 600px on an iphone takes almost all the width, even though the screen has more than double that in pixels. And when zooming, the reference px is zoomed. So the old reason for not using px and instead use rem doesn't apply.
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#188I don’t thnk the author’s recommendation to include
img {
display: block;
}
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#189> block elements expand horizontally to take up a whole line (like a heading).
Unless of course you set an input to display: block....
Re: Things I wish I’d known about CSS
#190> If your CSS reset doesn’t include this already, I’d suggest adding the following rule: ... If I'm trying to build a site design from scratch (rather than using Bootstrap or similar), is a CSS Reset a good place to start? Is there one in particular that's recommended?
It can be a very helpful start, but I'd review to make sure you're learning from it as well, rather than building onto something that could set you up for confusion later if you end up working without it. Here's one that's popular, lightweight, and helpful in my experience: https://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/
I prefer a combination of reset/normalize, but because of that I agree with your statement re: learning from what you are using. Then you can make informed choices about how you are using those things.