Why is people so bad at css?

gracrys

Gracrys

Posted on March 3, 2022

Why is people so bad at css?

In many communities i have been, exists certain dislike towards writing css, people get frustrated, or tend to settle towards a certain technology or strategy because it is what certain author says, or is just more comfortable

I will talk a little about myself, Im gracrys, you can call me hazy, i have been working for more than 5 years as UI designer and web developer, lately studying and practicing as UX designer, worked with many frameworks like react, vue, and my favorite svelte, but specialized on interfaces, on interactions, on what the user sees, you can know a little more about the differences between front end developers on the article called the great divide i studied css a lot, css frameworks from the inside, different html and css preprocessors and even advanced html and semantics, like when not to use a div for example, but thats another topic, and, css has become opinionated, so, in summary, im gracrys, and i make web layouts with floats.

Css has become opinionated

Now that i just dropped the scary headline, there is nothing bad with some technology being opinionated, most frameworks are, even javascript or html, but if you get used to those tactics and approaches, your tendency is to look over what you know, to repeat these approaches and struggle over creative technicalities. The design patterns exist for one reason, but they arent a bible to follow, you can adapt your algoritms to the language you are using and can work even better if you trust your capabilities.

And no, i am not a float css developer, i used other technologies too, but overcomplicating things when floats do the work is something you have to ask yourself, most of the time i have read "dont use grid because flex can do the work" and you have to use more steps, more lines, and two @medias to solve the issue.... No thanks. thats where the opinionated part comes, use what you know, and when it does fail, break the glass, and hack the part

hacking the code

"just set the image in absolute and -20 top and it does the work" for the sake of love no. Your code must be comprehensible and meaningfull, if you hack different things and drop different aproaches you are losing consistency, cohesion, your future self will get lost, and pray that something doesnt work. Learning how to solve an issue properly can save a lot of tape.

Trust your methodology

"Yes i use xx methodology, but i just staple some of this some of that and some hacks too"
Or imagine this case you are using certain framework, and your css sheets are full of some other methodology and classes that dont adapt together
methodologies exist after years of research of many people who colectively worked to make that strategy viable to most cases, so trust them, or better, question them. Whatever at the end you can work around them,but do it consistently

Why is css haaard?

Because you are dumb, and we all are. Learning a new thing is always hard, and css is something you probably never seen before, and can get out of hands really easy, practice makes perfection, learn what others people use, dont be afraid of checking others pages, and learn from your mistakes. And more important; take notes.

There are other things...

That i would wish to touch here, take risks, if your mentor, tutor, jedi, etc, uses certain things, ask him why, dont be afraid, he is just more accustomed to certain technologies, over scared of them, if you cant ask, look online, or try yourself, whats the difference.

Frameworks are for lazy people... No. after you get a certain level of knowledge, using certain framework can really agilize your work, and tailwind is nothing magical, imagine having all classes that you need, without writing and rewriting them, wow! thats a library, and you can even make your own, tailwind is an interesting case while it may seem like syntactic sugar, it can add to many classes that you dont need to your code, but using it correctly, oof, that can be rewarding

tl;dr: question your methods, and you results

💖 💪 🙅 🚩
gracrys
Gracrys

Posted on March 3, 2022

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