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Comment by frob | Hacker News Reader

I have this battle with newer developers quite frequently. They immediately want to reach for a framework for everything and they try to abstract away as much html and css as possible.

A common experience has been with new grads who have a lot of experience with tailwind. They're used to being able to just apply a tailwind class for everything. However, I find they often lack the understanding of what is actually going on at a css-level so are unable to easily do anything that breaks the tailwind mold. I often have them sit down with a more senior developer to watch them use raw css (with some developer ergonomics like styled components or sass) for a bit, and they come away with a new appreciation for how the fundamental languages of the (modern) browser are quite expressive and powerful.

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I remember a front-end interview my coworker administered where the candidate was asked what a CSS rule and CSS selector were, and the candidate could not answer. They had no idea what those terms meant. I think they'd only ever used React styled components.

“React-styled components”?

What do you mean by this? You still use CSS rules and selectors to style React components.

Also, maybe your coworker should up their interview game. Instead of asking “define this term” questions, maybe they should ask candidates to actually demonstrate skill.

(Also, it’s a bit weird to tell a “story” like this that happened to your coworker. Were you guys making fun of the candidate afterwards or something? I think we learned more about you and your coworker than about the candidate from your anecdote.)

Styled Components is a library for React that moves CSS styles into the JS code. Depending on how junior the interviewee was, and what tech they were primarily working with, it's possible they never encountered those terms even as they contributed to the code.

Or maybe they just pitched themselves as "full stack" when they were really more back end focused. Doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.

> Styled Components is a library for React that moves CSS styles into the JS code.

Thanks, I see.

> Doesn't seem that far-fetched to me.

The veracity of GP’s comment wasn’t my main concern.

I’m disappointed you’d assume the most toxic interpretation possible there. My coworker came to me and was just curious if the question, which was new, was reasonable - having seen it received so much confusion.

Sure.

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