4 ms·

If this guy was one of the designers of CSS then I have no idea why he’s acting so smug in that twitter thread.

TonyTrapp 5y ago
To be fair, I find many of those replies (by other people, that is) painful to read. Completely missing his point. I'd probably also get a bit annoyed after the fifth person pointed out something because they completely misunderstood what I said.
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago
  What is his point? It just reads as blame-shifting. Introduction of an unidiomatic feature into the standard for a particular use case is an acknowledgment of deficiency or incompleteness of the whole standard.
  - TonyTrapp 5y ago
    I read his point being that !important used for anything but the original intent is "code smell", and I'm fully behind that. He doesn't imply that you mustn't use it for anything but its designed purpose, I'm sure he is enough of an engineer to know that sometimes you cannot stick to your ideals. He's probably well aware that some people have to rely on frameworks which already use !important, so they have to work around that by using !important as well. None of that contradicts what he says, but it's still a misuse of the feature.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > I read his point being that !important used for anything but the original intent is "code smell", and I'm fully behind that. It doesn't explain why using !important for the original intent isn't equally a "code smell". Unless that is smelly too, in which case there are even more questions to answer about why this is the workaround and why you're supposed to use it for the original intent despite that.
    - exodust 5y ago
      > "...anything but the original intent" We're only hearing about the "original intent" now, via a smug tweet in 2022. It doesn't say much about someone who insinuates people "don't understand the cascade" if they don't follow an undisclosed design spec. And if they wanted it to be for font size only, they should have made it work only for fonts rather than any property.
  - tiborsaas 5y ago
    I think his point is that they added it because they had to not because they thought it's a good idea.
  - slim 5y ago
    the point is it should never been in css in first place. and css works better without it. I think he is frustrated because nobody takes the time to understand the cascade
- manquer 5y ago
  I would be annoyed as well, however if I tweet this instead of say write a well thought out article/blog with some references then I should expect low quality responses.
- tqi 5y ago
  Unless I'm missing some context it seems like this guy tweeted something intentionally cryptic, inflammatory, and baiting for no apparent reason then got mad when people took the bait?
gowld 5y ago
If you look at the original CSS spec, you wouldn't be surprised by smug overconfidence in its designers.

To be fair, I find many of those replies (by other people, that is) painful to read. Completely missing his point. I'd probably also get a bit annoyed after the fifth person pointed out something because they completely misunderstood what I said.

LudwigNagasena 5y ago
What is his point? It just reads as blame-shifting. Introduction of an unidiomatic feature into the standard for a particular use case is an acknowledgment of deficiency or incompleteness of the whole standard.
- TonyTrapp 5y ago
  I read his point being that !important used for anything but the original intent is "code smell", and I'm fully behind that. He doesn't imply that you mustn't use it for anything but its designed purpose, I'm sure he is enough of an engineer to know that sometimes you cannot stick to your ideals. He's probably well aware that some people have to rely on frameworks which already use !important, so they have to work around that by using !important as well. None of that contradicts what he says, but it's still a misuse of the feature.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > I read his point being that !important used for anything but the original intent is "code smell", and I'm fully behind that. It doesn't explain why using !important for the original intent isn't equally a "code smell". Unless that is smelly too, in which case there are even more questions to answer about why this is the workaround and why you're supposed to use it for the original intent despite that.
  - exodust 5y ago
    > "...anything but the original intent" We're only hearing about the "original intent" now, via a smug tweet in 2022. It doesn't say much about someone who insinuates people "don't understand the cascade" if they don't follow an undisclosed design spec. And if they wanted it to be for font size only, they should have made it work only for fonts rather than any property.
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  I think his point is that they added it because they had to not because they thought it's a good idea.
- slim 5y ago
  the point is it should never been in css in first place. and css works better without it. I think he is frustrated because nobody takes the time to understand the cascade
manquer 5y ago
I would be annoyed as well, however if I tweet this instead of say write a well thought out article/blog with some references then I should expect low quality responses.
tqi 5y ago
Unless I'm missing some context it seems like this guy tweeted something intentionally cryptic, inflammatory, and baiting for no apparent reason then got mad when people took the bait?

gowld 5y ago

If you look at the original CSS spec, you wouldn't be surprised by smug overconfidence in its designers.