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I realize that CSS itself isn’t really the point here, that it’s just one annoying thing in the pile of annoying things. But I wanted to mention... As a front

I realize that CSS itself isn’t really the point here, that it’s just one annoying thing in the pile of annoying things. But I wanted to mention... As a front end dev and someone who teaches front end stuff (React mainly), CSS really doesn’t change quickly, and when it does change, those changes are additive. CSS is very very good about backward compatibility. To give a specific example, CSS Grid is a newer feature than Flexbox, but both are useful for layout, and in this case newer isn’t better, just different. (I know, newer == better is nearly a universal constant in the front end world, but CSS doesn’t suffer from that nearly as much as JS does). I just wanted to mention this in case part of the problem is that you don’t know the “new” way to do something in CSS, and you don’t want to learn it, but you do know a way to do what you want... just do it the way you know, and it’ll very likely be fine. You might enjoy a utility CSS framework like Tailwind [0] that relieves you from some decisions and gives you some nice shorthand without locking you in to a specific look or a specific JS framework. (I know, another thing to learn... but it’s worth a quick look, might save you time in the long run) 0: https://tailwindcss.com/ https://tailwindcss.com/

FPGAhacker 7y ago
My problem is I don’t know a way. So I go searching for resources to learn from. Except there are dozens of ways to do a given thing. And all are really just partial, incomplete solutions, in different ways. Some are outdated, but how can I tell when I’m not a domain expert. And I don’t want to be an expert on every single domain I have to touch to build whatever thing I am working on. It’s a frustrating world.
- sjy 7y ago
  That’s a really interesting point. I learned CSS back in the early 2000s and it was easy. Not only was there less to learn, the resources out there were high quality. It was clear that CSS was the new “best practice” and the alternatives (tables-based layout and font tags) were legacy. Whenever I try to brush up on newer CSS features, the signal-to-noise ratio seems much lower than it used to be. Part of that is probably that I’m experienced enough to recognise bad advice now, but part of it is also the industrialisation of the web industry and huge influx of new developers.
- juliend2 7y ago
  How about just using bootstrap? Or is there some inherently difficult UI component that you need to get just right (without a UI toolkit) for the MVP to be _good enough_ for proving the market?
- cloverich 7y ago
  You just need to learn the fundamentals of a few CSS techniques, like flexbox [1], [2]. Flexbox is honestly the last new CSS thing I really remember learning that was core to what I did, and I learned it before my last job (~4 years of React full time). New stuff comes out but the core stuff last long and serves you well, esp. now that the old old browsers have died. [1]: https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/ https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/ [2]: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/
  - mygo 7y ago
    Not to add the the CSS confusion, but I guess this means flexbox is finally caniuseable. 98% coverage ain’t bad.

FPGAhacker 7y ago

My problem is I don’t know a way. So I go searching for resources to learn from. Except there are dozens of ways to do a given thing. And all are really just partial, incomplete solutions, in different ways. Some are outdated, but how can I tell when I’m not a domain expert. And I don’t want to be an expert on every single domain I have to touch to build whatever thing I am working on. It’s a frustrating world.

sjy 7y ago
That’s a really interesting point. I learned CSS back in the early 2000s and it was easy. Not only was there less to learn, the resources out there were high quality. It was clear that CSS was the new “best practice” and the alternatives (tables-based layout and font tags) were legacy. Whenever I try to brush up on newer CSS features, the signal-to-noise ratio seems much lower than it used to be. Part of that is probably that I’m experienced enough to recognise bad advice now, but part of it is also the industrialisation of the web industry and huge influx of new developers.
juliend2 7y ago
How about just using bootstrap? Or is there some inherently difficult UI component that you need to get just right (without a UI toolkit) for the MVP to be _good enough_ for proving the market?
cloverich 7y ago
You just need to learn the fundamentals of a few CSS techniques, like flexbox [1], [2]. Flexbox is honestly the last new CSS thing I really remember learning that was core to what I did, and I learned it before my last job (~4 years of React full time). New stuff comes out but the core stuff last long and serves you well, esp. now that the old old browsers have died. [1]: https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/ https://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by-flexbox/ [2]: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/
- mygo 7y ago
  Not to add the the CSS confusion, but I guess this means flexbox is finally caniuseable. 98% coverage ain’t bad.