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I'd like to take this opportunity to confess something: I've been a web developer, for pay, for eleven years. I still don't really get CSS. I sort of know abou

I'd like to take this opportunity to confess something: I've been a web developer, for pay, for eleven years. I still don't really get CSS. I sort of know about the box model, about margin vs padding, about display inline vs block vs online block vs flex and so on (still not so sure about display: table), about relative and absolute positioning and units. I can make you a website and make it look good and make it mobile responsive, but fundamentally, I don't know that I get how it all fits together and I don't know that I even care to, or that it even does... But it has to, right?

rriepe 6y ago
I make the argument in the book[1] that no, you shouldn't ever bother to learn CSS. [1] http://www.yousuckatcss.com http://www.yousuckatcss.com (it's PWYW)
zamadatix 6y ago
You can take "easy" answers to these e.g. "margin vs padding is about how much distance from content outside and inside the element respectively" or "relative vs absolute is about placing the element relative to where it normally would have found itself or absolutely against a reference point regardless of what else might already be in that space" and so on... but if you want to truly get past the "CSS is an art not a science" feeling reading the specs is surprisingly not as hard as it seems and I can almost guarantee you'll leave thinking "CSS is a science not an art". That being said as you say you might not really care as it probably isn't going to help you make pages any faster or better. I mean sure you can understand the nuance to a much fuller extent but at the end of the day it's simply unlikely to be what's holding you up from spitting out working CSS any faster if you've already been making pages for a decade. You have to go into it almost for a curiosities sake otherwise you'll get 100 pages of reading in and go "ya know, I really just don't care".

rriepe 6y ago

I make the argument in the book[1] that no, you shouldn't ever bother to learn CSS. [1] http://www.yousuckatcss.com http://www.yousuckatcss.com (it's PWYW)

zamadatix 6y ago

You can take "easy" answers to these e.g. "margin vs padding is about how much distance from content outside and inside the element respectively" or "relative vs absolute is about placing the element relative to where it normally would have found itself or absolutely against a reference point regardless of what else might already be in that space" and so on... but if you want to truly get past the "CSS is an art not a science" feeling reading the specs is surprisingly not as hard as it seems and I can almost guarantee you'll leave thinking "CSS is a science not an art". That being said as you say you might not really care as it probably isn't going to help you make pages any faster or better. I mean sure you can understand the nuance to a much fuller extent but at the end of the day it's simply unlikely to be what's holding you up from spitting out working CSS any faster if you've already been making pages for a decade. You have to go into it almost for a curiosities sake otherwise you'll get 100 pages of reading in and go "ya know, I really just don't care".