5 ms·

> You could read some general reference/guide/tutorial documentation on CSS, and then probably solve your problem Hours + Hours of reading and a lot of trial-a

• bumblehean 2mo ago
  >Hours + Hours of reading and a lot of trial-and-error. The loop was so long and sooo slow. But that's how you learn...
  • david-gpu 2mo ago
    It is not the only way to learn.
  • petcat 2mo ago
    We don't need to learn CSS anymore. Just like we don't need to learn ASM since GCC does a great job generating it from higher-level code.
    • kibwen 2mo ago
      I want to believe this is sarcasm, but it's so hard to tell these days.
      • petcat 2mo ago
        It's not sarcasm. We've all accepted that code-generation has been required and accepted for decades.
        • __d 2mo ago
          Code generation (by compiler) has one major difference: it's deterministic.
          • petcat 2mo ago
            Here are the reported miscompilation bugs in GCC so far in 2026. The ones labeled "wrong-code". https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20cr https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20cr I count 500+ of them.
            • absoflutely 2mo ago
              Not sure what your point is here since wrong code doesn't mean non-deterministic. How many of these yield different results with the same input and architecture?
            • smallerize 2mo ago
              That's not what "deterministic" means.
      • nonethewiser 2mo ago
        For many cases like the one described, its true.
        • kibwen 2mo ago
          It's not. The majority of people regularly using GCC to develop C code (IOW, the primary use case of GCC) are familiar with assembly.
          • fragmede 2mo ago
            How familiar? Do they ever look at the .S files? know what ar and nm do? Deal with objdump? How important are those details for day-to-day compiling of C code for regular programmers?
            • kibwen 2mo ago
              Yes, they know what ar and nm do. Whether these things are relevant for day-to-day compiling of C code is watching the goalposts sail over the horizon; the original statement being mocked here is "we don't need to learn ASM because GCC is so good", which completely betrays ignorance of why people learn still learn and deal with ASM to this day. Even if LLMs were comparable to compilers either in predictability (they're not) or code quality (they're not), the people who know what they're doing still take pains to understand how their tech stacks work, because that makes them better programmers, and this will continue to be true.
    • limitedmage 2mo ago
      I am a frontend engineer and I see so many bugs from vibe-coded CSS from people who think just like you. CSS is very powerful and easy to get wrong if you don't understand it. Since most CSS code on the internet is not good, LLMs do not generate good CSS code and create a lot of bugs ranging from bad performance to completely broken reflow.
      • ericd 2mo ago
        Funnily enough, I seem to remember some people saying that compiler generated assembly wasn’t as good as handmade assembly.
        • jazzyb 2mo ago
          For early compilers in certain contexts, this was once true.
      • willsmith72 2mo ago
        the question is, what's the business cost of some amount of css bugs vs paying specialists or people to learn these details. the generalists win overall, except of course for specific cases where specialists are great
    • a2ff6eeb0 2mo ago
      Honestly, we don't really need to learn any more. These days, I mostly copy and paste from tickets to the LLM, and then rubber stamp the output. I have people in my team that try to care about what they're making, but they're generating less code, and filling tickets more slowly, than I am. Even when it comes to system design and architecture, the LLMs aren't great at it, but honestly, they're better than my coworkers (I'd say system architecture is probably at the same readiness level that coding was last year). Expertise wouldn't really help you get things done faster. You could probably replace me with a minimum wage worker to do some manual testing and copy-paste errors from the console into the LLM, and still be fine. Let's see how long it is before the next round of layoffs, I guess. For now, the money's fine and the work's boring but ok. But, no, the LLMs rewarding expertise line is pure cope. Software is not really skilled labor any more. (obviously, throwaway -- I'm not interested in potentially advertising this to my employer)
      • JSR_FDED 2mo ago
        > Honestly, we don't really need to learn any more. Perhaps for your task of closing Jira tickets that’s true - but the you have a decision to make: wait until you’re eliminated or try to anticipate where future competitiveness comes from.
        • a2ff6eeb0 2mo ago
          Yeah, that's the thing; future competitiveness isn't going to come from learning, at least not from learning about software. The LLMs have that covered, and software is becoming low status work anyways. It's largely going to come from interpersonal skills and being likeable enough to be the face of the projects and companies. Technical skill is rapidly dropping in value.
          • miyoji 2mo ago
            This claim can only be true if LLMs have completely mastered all intellectual aspects of creating and shipping software. That's so far from being true it's like saying that humans are currently an interplanetary, post-scarcity species.
    • cure_42 2mo ago
      Define "we". The people who make the tools that generate your assembly instructions need to learn it. Just like the people who make the browser rendering engine and push CSS forward still need to learn it. The people who don't need to learn asm never needed to learn it. If you wouldn't code in asm now, you wouldn't have ever. This " logic" is so irrational.
    • _carbyau_ 2mo ago
      I just want to point out the exception - the person who the AI learns from. Someone has to know it. And to advance it to the next level requires domain level expertise. Or are we allowing LLM's to determine the next CSS snapshot/version/level/whatever?
      • gafferongames 2mo ago
        Yes
      • chasd00 2mo ago
        Experts work on gcc so everyone else doesn’t have to.
    • GPerson 2mo ago
      Learning ASM will actually teach you a lot about how the computer works, and I doubt learning CSS deeply teaches you much about design fundamentals.
  • sega_sai 2mo ago
    Yes, but sometimes I don't need and want to learn. One example from my recent experience in research -- building custom dashboard pages for results of scientific analyses. Each analysis is bespoke, and building interactive webpages is simply not the skill many researchers have (and it's boring IMO). But here with LLM you could easily explore the results visually/share them with collaborators etc. There are plenty examples like that. But certainly there are cases where learning is required.
  • nonethewiser 2mo ago
    Why do you think thats worth learning? Doing a few times manually sure… but to force yourself to solely rely on it is foolish. Just use the calculator.
  • marssaxman 2mo ago
    I lost my desire to learn anything about web development twenty years ago and specialized my career in a completely different direction. I had not touched HTML at all since then until earlier this year, when I discovered that AI robots could do it for me. Now I am happy to whip up HTML/CSS/JavaScript visualizers, explorers, and even one-off interactive report presentations whenever they might be useful, precisely because I don't have to learn any of that crap to do it. My time & attention are far more productively spent focused on the work I am actually good at and interested in doing.
    • bhk 2mo ago
      Working with the browser technology stack is living in a dystopian world of overcomplicated, often duplicative features defined in many thousands of pages of specifications, often revised and/or contradicted by other specifications, many of which do not apply to the reality of actual implementations, so encyclopedic knowledge of the specifications is not enough -- you need familiarity with everything written on the internet about these APIs. Accessing even conceptually simple features can require navigating through multiple APIs that purport to provide that feature, most of which have fatal shortcomings in design, specification, or real-world support. AI is a godsend here, at least for now ... I wonder what the impending post-human-developer "model collapse" will yield.
  • jonahx 2mo ago
    There was some learning, but also a lot of waste. As a self-learner, I've never been able to learn so fast as I can now with an LLM to instantly answer my specific questions, and incrementally correct and grow my mental model. And while with some subjects you need to worry about accuracy, LLMs are generally very good with programming questions, and (for most types of questions) you can verify their claims yourself.
  • suzzer99 2mo ago
    The problem with CSS is it's a) all broad and no depth and b) constantly adding major new paradigms. If you don't get up to speed and stay there, you lose it. Pre-AI I'd say I've gotten over the hump 3 times with CSS, only to lose it again by the next time I had to use it in volume.
  • spike__ 2mo ago
    It's inefficient though. With LLMs you can get a correct answer instantly for asking the right question, and if it's not perfect you can iterate on it. With your typical googling loop you wasted a ton of time on things you didn't need.
• lionkor 2mo ago
  This "instant" loop is so fast because it doesn't involve the part where you learn
  • petcat 2mo ago
    You seem to be hung up on the part about "learning". Do you know how x86 registers work? Or atomic instructions available on ARM, SPARC, or POWER architectures? No, of course not. Because all of that got abstracted to higher-level instructions decades ago.
    • hvs 2mo ago
      Yes, I do. And it wouldn't take you that long to learn, either.
      • NegativeLatency 2mo ago
        I understand your point, but also imagine applying that across the whole spectrum of computing. It's very useful that there's an intermediary that knows how that stuff works so I can build things without thinking about it in excruciating detail the whole time, I can dip down lower and learn stuff when it's relevant (like cache access and nested arrays) but I can also not do that in many situations. There's also the argument that you can do engineering without understanding the underlying science as seen in th pyramids, the beautiful old european churches, etc
      • petcat 2mo ago
        Well that's great for you. That's some knowledge that you will possess for the rest of your life. I want a green lawn and big bushy shrubs in front of my house. Do I need to know the intricate biology of my soil and habitat? No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive.
        • Johnny555 2mo ago
          >No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive. And others want the green lawn and big bushy shrubs, but don't want to learn all of the surface level things to make their lawn thrive so they hire a service to do it for them. And there's nothing wrong with that - not everyone enjoys the yard work, but they still want the thriving lawn and shrubs... and they are happy to write a check to OpenAI... err...Lawn Doctor every month to get that result since the time they save by not dealing with their lawn, they can pursue things they do want to do. Not everyone wants to (or needs to) learn every detail along the way of getting the results they want.
• Jtarii 2mo ago
  All the boring stuff you skipped to get right to the answer you want was just as important whether you want to admit it or not. Having to read through a structured resource describing something to figure something out has intrinsic value that an LLM is not going to provide you with.
  • dymk 2mo ago
    Well, no, it might not be important. Maybe you won't use that knowledge about CSS grids and flexbox for another year or two, or maybe ever.
  • daishi55 2mo ago
    > All the boring stuff you skipped to get right to the answer you want was just as important This is obviously not the case. There are mountains and mountains of boring, unimportant stuff that LLMs can do for us now. For example, at work I can now make a nestJS dashboard without having any idea what nestJS is. I can just tell the LLM what I want, and it makes it so. This allows me to make my tool useful to people without having to become an expert on something unimportant.
    • JSR_FDED 2mo ago
      You’re not the only one who doesn’t know what nestJS is
      • daishi55 2mo ago
        Yes? My point is that for what I do - low level systems and embedded stuff - nestJS is really not something that I need or want to know about. I just want a good dashboard. Now thanks to LLMs, I can focus on the fun and interesting stuff.
        • JSR_FDED 2mo ago
          My point is that it’s not even called nestJS