4 ms·

>>Everything I need, I get from CSS + a decent preprocessor (usually LESS these days). Maybe this is a symptom of using CSS, but I rarely even encounter people

>>Everything I need, I get from CSS + a decent preprocessor (usually LESS these days). Maybe this is a symptom of using CSS, but I rarely even encounter people describing layouts in the way GSS appears to want me to code them. I'm not sure how you could possibly know whether or not CSS is good enough without knowing what else may be possible. It sounds like you work with CSS professionally, so it isn't going to bother you if something takes an hour -- that's a perfectly good, billable hour. Supposedly, people in the past did not know that horses are slow. For my part, I hate CSS. I can't quite imagine what this new system will be like, but it's wonderful to think that progress may be coming.

wmeredith 12y ago
I totally hear what you're saying abut the horse analogy: I don't know what I don't know. What I DO know is that as an interaction designer working with CSS for about 8 years, I can say with some personal conviction that CSS is NOT my bottleneck when it comes to building great software. It has limitations and quirks, like anything else that is reality-based, but it's REALLY powerful for layout in terms of variety and depth of interaction. Add SASS or LESS to your workflow and CSS becomes the bee's knee's so to speak with all the power of functions, variables, arrays, etc... Everything can be improved, I suppose. However, I've seen poor knowledge of programming concepts in business leadership or toxic office politics dash months of work in an instant. As opposed to fiddly fluid layout issues in CSS. Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes.
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  CSS is fundamentally broken -- it lacks a property which is pretty basic to all systems, namely abstraction. I think Paul Chiusano put it way better than I could: http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.html http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.htm...
  - notduncansmith 12y ago
    Try using a preprocessor.
    - mtdewcmu 12y ago
      Needing a preprocessor to be usable doesn't argue for CSS not being broken. On the contrary.
      - notduncansmith 12y ago
        It would take some pretty interesting circumstances for me to argue that using raw CSS is a good idea. As I've said before, the language has plenty of flaws, and using plain CSS without a preprocessor would be, in the majority of cases, irresponsible. Sorry for any confusion.
        mtdewcmu 12y ago
        Thanks to CSS not having that from the start, it led to the situation we have today, where there are at least two different preprocessors to choose from: Sass and Less Having two solutions is worse than having one solution, and we can credit CSS for creating this situation by not having its own.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  Thanks for expressing exactly how I feel about CSS. Especially for mentioning preprocessors - a child comment mentions that CSS lacks abstraction, but in a world with Sass/LESS/etc, and tools like Gulp that make these preprocessors pretty much effortless to use, that's really not a concern any more. Hasn't been for years. There are things I would like (computed properties like attr()), but things like this don't exactly trip me up: a solution is never more than a few lines of Javascript away. Also, even if you're not a "skilled coder", there's always Google if you get stumped. The likelihood of you being the first person to have trouble doing [supposedly difficult thing] is close to 0.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  >>Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes. I think the skill you're talking about must be skill with CSS. General programming knowledge doesn't help much in a CSS trainwreck scenario -- at least, it doesn't seem to help me. Basically what you've said is that CSS can be efficient and powerful when in the hands of an experienced CSS expert. That's not an especially good reflection on the design of CSS itself.
notduncansmith 12y ago
I do a lot of CSS at work, yes. > it isn't going to bother you if something takes an hour -- that's a perfectly good, billable hour. I don't particularly care for the implication that I find working slowly to be acceptable. My company rewards developers well for finishing fixed-bid (i.e. almost all) projects early, since it directly results in more revenue for the company - thus, it's in my direct best interest to get any work done (styling or otherwise) as quickly as possible. Plus, I like anything that makes me more efficient / makes things easier for me. > I'm not sure how you could possibly know whether or not CSS is good enough without knowing what else may be possible. You've made an error in your reasoning. It would not be possible for me to know that CSS is the best, but it's certainly possible to know that CSS is good enough. There's a certain, explicit bar for "good enough" and that is being able to complete a project in a number of hours that is less than or equal to the amount we quoted our client. I'm able to meet or exceed that bar with regularity - thus, I can conclude that my toolchain as a whole is "good enough". > Supposedly, people in the past did not know that horses are slow. My mind is definitely open to a better alternative - however, I feel entitled to a healthy degree of skepticism, given that I'm already doing better than "good enough".
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest that you would work slowly. Your clients expect you to work with CSS, because it's the accepted solution, and anything else would be reckless. Within those constraints, CSS is a good solution -- circularly, though, because CSS is required by the constraints. I work in web development, myself, though I haven't been doing it consistently through the years. It seems to be somewhat of a low-margin business, and the day-to-day challenges are mostly around producing reliable results within a budget. In that context, complaining about CSS is beside the point, because the day-to-day concern is doing CSS quickly and well, not replacing CSS with something entirely different. If styling became 5x faster overnight, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for practitioners; just like it probably wasn't good for horse-related businesses when cars came along.* *I'm not taking that analogy too seriously. I will not believe this new styling is a revolution until I see it.
  - notduncansmith 12y ago

wmeredith 12y ago

I totally hear what you're saying abut the horse analogy: I don't know what I don't know. What I DO know is that as an interaction designer working with CSS for about 8 years, I can say with some personal conviction that CSS is NOT my bottleneck when it comes to building great software. It has limitations and quirks, like anything else that is reality-based, but it's REALLY powerful for layout in terms of variety and depth of interaction. Add SASS or LESS to your workflow and CSS becomes the bee's knee's so to speak with all the power of functions, variables, arrays, etc... Everything can be improved, I suppose. However, I've seen poor knowledge of programming concepts in business leadership or toxic office politics dash months of work in an instant. As opposed to fiddly fluid layout issues in CSS. Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes.

lomnakkus 12y ago
CSS is fundamentally broken -- it lacks a property which is pretty basic to all systems, namely abstraction. I think Paul Chiusano put it way better than I could: http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.html http://pchiusano.github.io/2014-07-02/css-is-unnecessary.htm...
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  Try using a preprocessor.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    Needing a preprocessor to be usable doesn't argue for CSS not being broken. On the contrary.
    - notduncansmith 12y ago
      It would take some pretty interesting circumstances for me to argue that using raw CSS is a good idea. As I've said before, the language has plenty of flaws, and using plain CSS without a preprocessor would be, in the majority of cases, irresponsible. Sorry for any confusion.
      - mtdewcmu 12y ago
        Thanks to CSS not having that from the start, it led to the situation we have today, where there are at least two different preprocessors to choose from: Sass and Less Having two solutions is worse than having one solution, and we can credit CSS for creating this situation by not having its own.
notduncansmith 12y ago
Thanks for expressing exactly how I feel about CSS. Especially for mentioning preprocessors - a child comment mentions that CSS lacks abstraction, but in a world with Sass/LESS/etc, and tools like Gulp that make these preprocessors pretty much effortless to use, that's really not a concern any more. Hasn't been for years. There are things I would like (computed properties like attr()), but things like this don't exactly trip me up: a solution is never more than a few lines of Javascript away. Also, even if you're not a "skilled coder", there's always Google if you get stumped. The likelihood of you being the first person to have trouble doing [supposedly difficult thing] is close to 0.
mtdewcmu 12y ago
>>Which any skilled coder can do away with in a few minutes. I think the skill you're talking about must be skill with CSS. General programming knowledge doesn't help much in a CSS trainwreck scenario -- at least, it doesn't seem to help me. Basically what you've said is that CSS can be efficient and powerful when in the hands of an experienced CSS expert. That's not an especially good reflection on the design of CSS itself.

notduncansmith 12y ago

I do a lot of CSS at work, yes. > it isn't going to bother you if something takes an hour -- that's a perfectly good, billable hour. I don't particularly care for the implication that I find working slowly to be acceptable. My company rewards developers well for finishing fixed-bid (i.e. almost all) projects early, since it directly results in more revenue for the company - thus, it's in my direct best interest to get any work done (styling or otherwise) as quickly as possible. Plus, I like anything that makes me more efficient / makes things easier for me. > I'm not sure how you could possibly know whether or not CSS is good enough without knowing what else may be possible. You've made an error in your reasoning. It would not be possible for me to know that CSS is the best, but it's certainly possible to know that CSS is good enough. There's a certain, explicit bar for "good enough" and that is being able to complete a project in a number of hours that is less than or equal to the amount we quoted our client. I'm able to meet or exceed that bar with regularity - thus, I can conclude that my toolchain as a whole is "good enough". > Supposedly, people in the past did not know that horses are slow. My mind is definitely open to a better alternative - however, I feel entitled to a healthy degree of skepticism, given that I'm already doing better than "good enough".

mtdewcmu 12y ago
I didn't mean to suggest that you would work slowly. Your clients expect you to work with CSS, because it's the accepted solution, and anything else would be reckless. Within those constraints, CSS is a good solution -- circularly, though, because CSS is required by the constraints. I work in web development, myself, though I haven't been doing it consistently through the years. It seems to be somewhat of a low-margin business, and the day-to-day challenges are mostly around producing reliable results within a budget. In that context, complaining about CSS is beside the point, because the day-to-day concern is doing CSS quickly and well, not replacing CSS with something entirely different. If styling became 5x faster overnight, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing for practitioners; just like it probably wasn't good for horse-related businesses when cars came along.* *I'm not taking that analogy too seriously. I will not believe this new styling is a revolution until I see it.
- notduncansmith 12y ago