3 ms·

The comments here remind of the "Git isn't hard to understand" humblebrags that we hear again and again on this forum, surrounded by a sea of honest and justifi

The comments here remind of the "Git isn't hard to understand" humblebrags that we hear again and again on this forum, surrounded by a sea of honest and justified criticism. If lots of people complain about understanding your product - intelligent people - then your product is hard to understand. Why is the important question.

skydhash 2y ago
Usability is a thing and can be improved in some things, but sometimes it’s people that don’t want to read the manual and instead spend their day chasing after abstractions. Which they will abandon at the first edge case they cannot solve because of the lack of foundational understanding.
omer_balyali 2y ago
It doesn't mean that the product is broken. Sometimes intelligence is the worst enemy of self, as you think you can easily understand something or not even have to learn it correctly, as it looks very trivial. This is the case with most software developers that trying to fit mental models from other languages to CSS and then expecting it to behave in the same way. Mismatch of mental models are not uncommon, especially in "intelligent people" as they don't always assume that their understanding may be wrong. For me, biggest issue with CSS is how it's taught, how it's learned and mental models around the concepts. Most people have a different mental model of how the underlying system works, and this mismatch results in developer trying hard to bend CSS to his will. CSS may be good or bad, there can be a better alternative... but are there any practical change that may happen soon enough that we stop learning and understanding how CSS works? Even we have a new language, people will try to use it as they used CSS before, so those intelligent people may do the same mistakes again. We are stuck with CSS, whether we like it or not. I've been writing CSS since 2001 and it progressed immensely, still there are many things that's not possible to do easily with only CSS. But still it's the only thing we have for now and to make it better or to make a better alternative we have to understand how it works before just saying "i need a new tool", as the new tool may have the same issues as well.

skydhash 2y ago

Usability is a thing and can be improved in some things, but sometimes it’s people that don’t want to read the manual and instead spend their day chasing after abstractions. Which they will abandon at the first edge case they cannot solve because of the lack of foundational understanding.

omer_balyali 2y ago

It doesn't mean that the product is broken. Sometimes intelligence is the worst enemy of self, as you think you can easily understand something or not even have to learn it correctly, as it looks very trivial. This is the case with most software developers that trying to fit mental models from other languages to CSS and then expecting it to behave in the same way. Mismatch of mental models are not uncommon, especially in "intelligent people" as they don't always assume that their understanding may be wrong. For me, biggest issue with CSS is how it's taught, how it's learned and mental models around the concepts. Most people have a different mental model of how the underlying system works, and this mismatch results in developer trying hard to bend CSS to his will. CSS may be good or bad, there can be a better alternative... but are there any practical change that may happen soon enough that we stop learning and understanding how CSS works? Even we have a new language, people will try to use it as they used CSS before, so those intelligent people may do the same mistakes again. We are stuck with CSS, whether we like it or not. I've been writing CSS since 2001 and it progressed immensely, still there are many things that's not possible to do easily with only CSS. But still it's the only thing we have for now and to make it better or to make a better alternative we have to understand how it works before just saying "i need a new tool", as the new tool may have the same issues as well.