Why do people complain so much about CSS? | Hacker News Reader

Why do people complain so much about CSS?

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3 pointsjerodsanto4 comments

Maybe because CSS is simply a piece of shit? Overly complex, yet always too restricted, unfocused and trying to be everything to everybody (and failing at that), having severe cognitive issues and far-distance effects (tried to grok other people's CSS?), making implementing browsers from scratch impossible, carrying loads of extra bytes and CDNs spying on you, inviting people to flaunt their Stockholm's as in: managed to grok CSS so now have to educate the world when the question really should be whether we need it at all. Above all: unnecessary proliferation of microsyntax and unintended consequences ("frameworks") when HTML attributes are or should be sufficient. And no, the structure-vs-presentation dichotomy doesn't hold water for any rational person.

1,000%. Every time this is brought up, proponents screech about what CSS can do and never about how CSS does things in the shittiest possible way.

And just like with protestant work ethic, downing coffees, sleeping next to zero hours, drinking a lot in front of others as top dog, its all worn with a badge of honor and dumb smile that hides the true horror of the many many hours you spent getting good at mangling your back to write CSS that works.

You know, there's more than one parallel to religion here ); since newcomers seem to approach the "holy trinity" of HTML/CSS/JS as act of revelation. As in, there just has to be a deeper sense in CSS layout models, and if I fail to discover the reason why CSS properties and olde HTML presentation attributes are essentially representing the same thing with different syntax, it's my fault for not recognizing the grand plan behind it. Thus, if I finally managed to see a dubious use case for it, I've advanced one step in the hierarchy of the CSS church. That's how military hierarchies are build - by giving people ranks, thereby using their desire not to loose height energy aka sunk cost fallacy. Of course, unless you're doing CSS/web design all the time and nothing else, soon you're leaving your trail of knowledge acquisition in the form of a CSS framework product or consulting, at which point you have a vested interest in CSS staying opaque.

I keep trying, and failing, to figure out who CSS is aimed at. It's not designers; no page designer ever thinks about layout the way CSS thinks about layout. It's not programmers: it would have a more coherent spec if it were aimed at implementers. It's obviously not novices.

I keep feeling like there's some point-of-view I should be wrapping my head around to grok CSS. But I have no idea whose POV that might be. It's certainly not mine.

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