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Comment by SchizoDuckie | Hacker News Reader

From their demo: structure.gss

     @h |-(#message)~-~(#follow)~-~(#following)-(#followers)-|
     in(#profile-card)
     gap($sgap)
        !strong {
          &[top] == &:next[top];
        }
      }

If you inject stuff like this into a project, make sure you're doing it solo. 'cause if you're on my team, i'll slap you.

WTF is this voodoo? Less and Sass aren't complex enough? CSS isn't hard enough to work with as it is?

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> WTF is this voodoo?

It's constraints-based CSS. Of course it's going to look different to CSS/LESS/SASS. It's solving the problem of layout positioning a different way.

> If you inject stuff like this into a project, make sure you're doing it solo.

Well, yes. Project teams shouldn't be jumping on the latest shiny web things just for the sake of it, especially on unproven frameworks.

> 'cause if you're on my team, i'll slap you.

Grow up.

And for all that effort you get an avatar that is horizontally misaligned by 10px and a webpage that falls apart when you vertically shrink your browser window.

>'cause if you're on my team, i'll slap you

Because you're so macho, right? And anything you don't understand shouldn't be used.

[EDIT] I find the sample code quite readable -- as long as one understands that it does more than constraints in that example, and that you of course have to read on the symbols to get them, like you'd have to read on Ruby's @, C's * and &, on regular expressions, etc.

But this macho talk from "team leaders" I dislike.

What exactly does it try to prove, even "metaphorically"? That the leader is so arrogant that wont discuss but bully his team? How about we reverse it: who would want to work in a team with some slap happy lead? Who'd want to hire that team or acquire that "talent"?

(And would this talk help the IT industry attract more female programmers?)

> Because you're so macho, right? And anything you don't understand shouldn't be used.

Or because he finds it so objectionable that he wanted to express strongly how much so it is. You read way too much into it.

> But this macho talk from "team leaders" I dislike.

Why do you assume he's only talking about situations where he'd be the team lead?

> That the leader is so arrogant that wont discuss but bully his team?

How about that other team members should consider the impact of technology choices and discuss them with the team before putting potentially controversial choices like this into use? (and no, not in order to avoid physical retribution, but because some choices are just awful).

> How about we reverse it: who would want to work in a team with some slap happy lead?

How about you don't read way too much into it? Most places I've worked, slapping someone would lead to a minimum a written warning, but more likely would get you fired, and it would not be impossible the victim would call the police to report the assault.

As a result, absent other information, it is quite reasonable to assume that the comment did not imply he would actually slap anyone.

Way to overreact to some shallow taunting. You read a lot of things into this that aren't there.

Look at how he/she tacks some feminist pandering onto the end of the post. It's just one step away from accusing the original commenter of creating a hostile work environment.

This is the exact type of person you don't want on your team: thin-skinned, easily offended and expecting the same level of mollycoddling we pour onto children (another problem in itself).

I thought personal attacks weren't allowed on HN?

EDIT: And apparently calling you out on it leads to immediate downvotes. Wow, this really is turning into reddit.

People don't like meta-discussion. It's not punishing you for calling out someone they like, it's about burying discussion topics they don't want to see derail the conversation.

I did not vote down.

What about your point here?

Do you intend to turn a technological frustration talk into a gender (in)equality debate?

Personally I got that he's just expressing how absurd would be to see something as odd/complicated as that code trying to solve a problem that is inherently due to the complexity (inefficiency maybe) the current CSS model/spec.

I can't tell if you're complainin about inherent difficulty in this stylesheet language, or just about introducing a new stylesheet language with a learning curve. If the former, I would disagree—it seems easier and much more useful than CSS to me. If the latter, well, any new language or technology has a learning curve, and it's rarely easy to know whether it will be worth learning.

Tone of comment aside, I do have to agree that that sample is fairly hieroglyph heavy.

Sass might make it more complex, but after learning it you save an extraordinary amount of time. I also don't find CSS that hard to work with anyway though.

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