3 ms·
There was this piece of common knowledge floating around a number of years ago about how you need to know at least 1 level of abstraction beneath you well, and
by mehrdadn 7y ago
There was this piece of common knowledge floating around a number of years ago about how you need to know at least 1 level of abstraction beneath you well, and have a working knowledge of the second one below it, to use your tools effectively. I don't recall where the advice floated around or came from but it was something along those lines, and it's pretty true.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoI’m not sure I agree with that. How does this work in the context of CSS? Do people making websites need to understand how WebKit paints the screen? The word “effectively” seems rather arbitrary here too.
- mehrdadn 7y agoI feel like being able to find an exception doesn't mean the rule is invalid?
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoHow many exceptions should I find to invalidate the rule?
- mehrdadn 7y agoEnough to show it's at least on the same order of magnitude as the number of situations where the rule does hold.
- goto11 7y agoI actually think you do need to understand rendering logic to some extent to use CSS effectively. For example I have seen many having a hard time understanding why it is trivially easy to align an element to the top of the screen but tricky to align something to the bottom of the screen - something which would be symmetric and equally simple in a typical application GUI framework. But understanding how layouts are generated makes this clear.
- Izkata 7y agoIMO the conceptual level below CSS is in the design sphere - the box model itself. You would not believe the number of people who hack together properties until they get something that looks right, without understanding the box model, who think they're really good frontend developers.
- tjalfi 7y agoWere you thinking of Joel Spolsky's Law of Leaky Abstractions[0]? [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-a...
- mehrdadn 7y agoI don't think so, though it's close.