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I'm a fan of understanding the grittier side of the box-model but I've found that I can't outpace a system designed by a team of engineers to solve the problem

I'm a fan of understanding the grittier side of the box-model but I've found that I can't outpace a system designed by a team of engineers to solve the problem of quick and easy layouts and components. The comment above is definitely a great counter argument to rolling your own CSS from the ground up. I've seen projects with many engineers breaking each other's features because they weren't specific enough with their CSS targeting. The worst part is that sometimes it takes a keen eye to see that something broke in the first place - for example a font is wrong or a div moved etc. It's surprising how many customers don't even raise an issue, they just work around it. I remember the days when the industry was shifting between Underscore, jQuery, Backbone, Knockout, Ember and React. React obviously won with its bastardisation of compiled frontends and DOM diffing and Vue recently seems to have caused a stir by giving old paradigms a fresh coat of paint. After all these years this ecosystem is still in flux...reflux...redux... and no static solution is going to suit every individual or survive indefinitely - the ideal solution seems to be able to adapt to requirements as they come and embrace stack requirements as learning exercises in what does and doesn't work.

hmeh 3y ago
Or it's to call to the carpet the people that are enforcing "stack requirements" of tooling that is overly complex for the job. > I've seen projects with many engineers breaking each other's features because they weren't specific enough with their CSS targeting. Agreed, and to add to that -- unless a team is willing to stop the line and understand why and how this happened, it will keep happening. Tailwind eliminates classes of problems without requiring people to collaborate or think. That's its "benefit". As I've said elsewhere, it comes with costs, but many of those are subtle (many devs won't have enough experience to observe them) in their short term effects. > I'm a fan of understanding the grittier side of the box-model but I've found that I can't outpace a system designed by a team of engineers to solve the problem of quick and easy layouts and components. > I've seen projects with many engineers breaking each other's features... I don't usually comment on people using "engineer" to describe software developers, but the irony in these statements is a bit much. What is being described is not engineering, it is hacking. It shouldn't be a surprise that when we hack, we break things.

hmeh 3y ago

Or it's to call to the carpet the people that are enforcing "stack requirements" of tooling that is overly complex for the job. > I've seen projects with many engineers breaking each other's features because they weren't specific enough with their CSS targeting. Agreed, and to add to that -- unless a team is willing to stop the line and understand why and how this happened, it will keep happening. Tailwind eliminates classes of problems without requiring people to collaborate or think. That's its "benefit". As I've said elsewhere, it comes with costs, but many of those are subtle (many devs won't have enough experience to observe them) in their short term effects. > I'm a fan of understanding the grittier side of the box-model but I've found that I can't outpace a system designed by a team of engineers to solve the problem of quick and easy layouts and components. > I've seen projects with many engineers breaking each other's features... I don't usually comment on people using "engineer" to describe software developers, but the irony in these statements is a bit much. What is being described is not engineering, it is hacking. It shouldn't be a surprise that when we hack, we break things.