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mobile selectors, "group" selectors, hover styles... the list goes on and on. like all things, it depends on how your workflow. if you have a super defined hi

mobile selectors, "group" selectors, hover styles... the list goes on and on. like all things, it depends on how your workflow. if you have a super defined hierarchy and naming scheme you can reference then sure, centralize all your CSS. if you have many components and multiple people working on them sometimes it's better to separate everything out and enforce with a guide. i can't tell you how frustrating it is to open a component and have no idea what you're looking at because you worked on the thing months ago, or you change one thing in your centralized CSS and have no idea what the side effect are. with tailwind i can see exactly the styles i'm looking for. FOR ME, works better to have a core style file and then move everything to something like tailwind per component for maintenance. tired of seeing the same simplistic arguments against utility frameworks. if you can't see the merits of it then you obviously aren't working on projects that need that, but don't criticize it blindly. it's not for lack of CSS knowledge.

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zelphirkalt 1y ago
The thing is, when you are doing CSS properly, you will "anchor" your selectors appropriately. What I mean is the following: Ltes say you got some "component" or whatever you want to call it, and have a button in it, that is special in some way. Of course you are not gonna write "button a {someproperty: specialvalue}". You should be writing the selector as specific for that component in this case, for example "my-special-component button a {...}". If the design is implemented thoughtfully, then most of the problems people claim to have with CSS are simply non-existent. Like "side-effect" you mention. That can only happen, if the design is implemented reusing parts of other design definitions, where they are not meant to be reused. Any other side effect would be intentional. For example button text color and paragraph text color. If one wants them both to change, when one of them is changed, then one reuses the style definition, but probably in most cases one does not, and therefore has separate definitions and therefore has no silly side effects, even after a few months not looking at the project.
- ookblah 1y ago
  yeah i'm just tired of making the same argument over and over. for what it's worth i've been doing CSS "properly" since the time when that site was a thing. back in the backbone days, now vue/react and before tailwind this is EXACTLY what we did, scope the styles down to the component, then layer it on top of the global styles. so sure, .my-selector a is specific to that component. the "side effect" happens when your app starts to span 100s of components and you need slight variations for everything. you're telling me you can assure me that none of your master global classes contain any design definitions that could not possibly be reused? i'm calling bullshit. it's like saying your backend 100% never has any duplicated functions. so with that out of the way, let's say you do get your global styles like 90% of the way there. so in each component you scoped it down. now lets say for one button you had to adjust the margin a bit, or another the styling is somewhat diff. multiply this by 100s of different components. tell me now how me opening a file, seeing "button variation-class-1 variation-class-2", then going down into the component <style> section and looking up exactly what the variation and what properties were used is in anyway "better" than just seeing some super powered inline style directly in the button. it's the same complexity and now you've gotten rid of the prime benefit of CSS hierarchy and split the "style and structure" in just one independent component. at some point you can't possibly create the number variations you need and you can't extract out "reusable" parts. maybe you have 5 buttons and only 2 need the 20px margin. do you create a "button 20px" class and do that in each component? no. at some point you will just inline it because it's easy, or you will create your utility class except it will be worse than tailwind.
  - skydhash 1y ago
    Or you can just just ".special-component .button" selector adapting the selector to be more specific as needed. Most code reuse in CSS is bad, because they break when the design changes. You don't DRY just because the code are the same.
    - ookblah 1y ago
      yeah and when you do that for 100s of components i'd rather just see a utility class on the button itself vs hunting down its meaning in the related section of the component. this is exactly the shit i was annoyed by when scaling, having to scope a .my-component-X section for literally every component and then grokking it later. you're basically taking the worst part of CSS (hunting down the meaning of a selector) and duplicating it for every component. now maybe you say name it better or more semantically? congrats you recreated BEM lol. literally all the arguments used against it are purists for purity sake or thinking people haven't gone through this same thought exercise. just use whatever is best for the task. i still use css the "traditional" way. /rant

deleted 1y ago

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zelphirkalt 1y ago

The thing is, when you are doing CSS properly, you will "anchor" your selectors appropriately. What I mean is the following: Ltes say you got some "component" or whatever you want to call it, and have a button in it, that is special in some way. Of course you are not gonna write "button a {someproperty: specialvalue}". You should be writing the selector as specific for that component in this case, for example "my-special-component button a {...}". If the design is implemented thoughtfully, then most of the problems people claim to have with CSS are simply non-existent. Like "side-effect" you mention. That can only happen, if the design is implemented reusing parts of other design definitions, where they are not meant to be reused. Any other side effect would be intentional. For example button text color and paragraph text color. If one wants them both to change, when one of them is changed, then one reuses the style definition, but probably in most cases one does not, and therefore has separate definitions and therefore has no silly side effects, even after a few months not looking at the project.

ookblah 1y ago
yeah i'm just tired of making the same argument over and over. for what it's worth i've been doing CSS "properly" since the time when that site was a thing. back in the backbone days, now vue/react and before tailwind this is EXACTLY what we did, scope the styles down to the component, then layer it on top of the global styles. so sure, .my-selector a is specific to that component. the "side effect" happens when your app starts to span 100s of components and you need slight variations for everything. you're telling me you can assure me that none of your master global classes contain any design definitions that could not possibly be reused? i'm calling bullshit. it's like saying your backend 100% never has any duplicated functions. so with that out of the way, let's say you do get your global styles like 90% of the way there. so in each component you scoped it down. now lets say for one button you had to adjust the margin a bit, or another the styling is somewhat diff. multiply this by 100s of different components. tell me now how me opening a file, seeing "button variation-class-1 variation-class-2", then going down into the component <style> section and looking up exactly what the variation and what properties were used is in anyway "better" than just seeing some super powered inline style directly in the button. it's the same complexity and now you've gotten rid of the prime benefit of CSS hierarchy and split the "style and structure" in just one independent component. at some point you can't possibly create the number variations you need and you can't extract out "reusable" parts. maybe you have 5 buttons and only 2 need the 20px margin. do you create a "button 20px" class and do that in each component? no. at some point you will just inline it because it's easy, or you will create your utility class except it will be worse than tailwind.
- skydhash 1y ago
  Or you can just just ".special-component .button" selector adapting the selector to be more specific as needed. Most code reuse in CSS is bad, because they break when the design changes. You don't DRY just because the code are the same.
  - ookblah 1y ago
    yeah and when you do that for 100s of components i'd rather just see a utility class on the button itself vs hunting down its meaning in the related section of the component. this is exactly the shit i was annoyed by when scaling, having to scope a .my-component-X section for literally every component and then grokking it later. you're basically taking the worst part of CSS (hunting down the meaning of a selector) and duplicating it for every component. now maybe you say name it better or more semantically? congrats you recreated BEM lol. literally all the arguments used against it are purists for purity sake or thinking people haven't gone through this same thought exercise. just use whatever is best for the task. i still use css the "traditional" way. /rant