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I'm all for CSS getting more powerful but there's an interesting flip side: the increased expressiveness may make it more difficult to reason about. Even an ad

I'm all for CSS getting more powerful but there's an interesting flip side: the increased expressiveness may make it more difficult to reason about. Even an advanced use of grid is tricky to understand. Now combine this with the new parent selector, container queries, layers, and many other new goodies. There's a lot of (new) cognitive demand placed on already burdened developers. I think this is one of the reasons why a lot of these features have very little or slow adaption. Even something essential as grid, usable for years now, is rarely spotted in the wild.

deleted 3y ago
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weo3dev 3y ago
Disagree. Have been using and developing with CSS as my focus for ten years now. If you take the same amount of time you would take to learn the ins and outs of [pick any other language], you would have a better time of it. I'd like to add a reason that you do not list and one that I constantly run into is that due to the lack of understanding, large applications have been built and it is simply not cost-effective to re-wire the whole thing using better approaches. The only time I get to apply features and structures that are less than five years old to projects is when it's a green field opportunity. Otherwise, the budget just doesn't cut it. Personal comment/response: I will say that CSS seems to be for a particular _breed_ of developer. Almost designers, but not quite. My perspective of this comes with also using JavaScript for the same amount of time. The thinking I use in both of those domains differs at times quite dramatically. I'll use the number of pages of OReilly's foundational programming books as an example of anecdotal complexity of three languages: JavaScript - 704 pages, PHP - 842 pages, and CSS - 538 pages (the new one coming out will be 1090). No frontend co-worker that I have had spanning the past ten years has ever worked through the _old_ CSS one from 2006, at all. Even those that loved CSS, did not own a copy of that one. It covered everything CSS and I read it cover to cover. Without a commitment to CSS on par with commitments that developers make everyday to any given framework or other programming language, anyone trying to wield CSS on the same level as the other tools will continue to be disappointed. And as long as the culture of web development continues to de-value solid in-depth understanding of both HTML and CSS, then yes, quite a lot of us will remain over-burdened in our day-to-day responsibilities. That's just my take. As I am also a musician who plays both piano and oboe - I can use that as an analogy as well. I can teach _anyone_ piano. I cannot, at all, simply teach anyone oboe. They _must_ have an inclination towards it and I can literally bet my life savings every time that really good oboists also seem to be really quirky humans. I would put passionate CSS developers at the same table and I would expect them all to get along.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

weo3dev 3y ago

Disagree. Have been using and developing with CSS as my focus for ten years now. If you take the same amount of time you would take to learn the ins and outs of [pick any other language], you would have a better time of it. I'd like to add a reason that you do not list and one that I constantly run into is that due to the lack of understanding, large applications have been built and it is simply not cost-effective to re-wire the whole thing using better approaches. The only time I get to apply features and structures that are less than five years old to projects is when it's a green field opportunity. Otherwise, the budget just doesn't cut it. Personal comment/response: I will say that CSS seems to be for a particular _breed_ of developer. Almost designers, but not quite. My perspective of this comes with also using JavaScript for the same amount of time. The thinking I use in both of those domains differs at times quite dramatically. I'll use the number of pages of OReilly's foundational programming books as an example of anecdotal complexity of three languages: JavaScript - 704 pages, PHP - 842 pages, and CSS - 538 pages (the new one coming out will be 1090). No frontend co-worker that I have had spanning the past ten years has ever worked through the _old_ CSS one from 2006, at all. Even those that loved CSS, did not own a copy of that one. It covered everything CSS and I read it cover to cover. Without a commitment to CSS on par with commitments that developers make everyday to any given framework or other programming language, anyone trying to wield CSS on the same level as the other tools will continue to be disappointed. And as long as the culture of web development continues to de-value solid in-depth understanding of both HTML and CSS, then yes, quite a lot of us will remain over-burdened in our day-to-day responsibilities. That's just my take. As I am also a musician who plays both piano and oboe - I can use that as an analogy as well. I can teach _anyone_ piano. I cannot, at all, simply teach anyone oboe. They _must_ have an inclination towards it and I can literally bet my life savings every time that really good oboists also seem to be really quirky humans. I would put passionate CSS developers at the same table and I would expect them all to get along.