Tailwind, and the death of web craftsmanship
pdx.su
external-link
There's a worrying trend in modern web development, where developers are throwing away decades of carefully wrought systems for a bit of perceived convenience. Tools such as Tailwind CSS seem to be spreading like wildfire, with very few people ever willing to acknowledge the regression they bring to our field. And I'm getting tired of it
@Jdreben@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
English
121Y

Very good article imo. I didn’t disagree with anything. I especially agree with the ugliness of the many class names in my html.

My problem I guess is reconciling how much of a pleasure it’s been to use. Perhaps I, a primarily backend developer historically, embody the death of web craftsmanship, but I don’t really want to learn modern CSS if I don’t have to 😅

The easier I can get something styled and back to doing actual business logic rather than making things pretty the happier I am. I highly respect frontend styling gurus but I’m not that interested in spending time mastering true web craftsmanship, I care more about delivering the product as fast and as beautifully to the user as possible.

Paradox
creator
link
fedilink
English
81Y

I’d encourage you to take a look at modern CSS with a fresh eye. It’s gotten really good. Good enough I’ve got another blog post in the works talking about how much goddamned fun its gotten. In the last few years alone, we’ve got sass-style nesting, parent selectors (!), combinator selectors (roughly like list comprehensions in their ability to fill out a matrix of potential selectables), color functions, and far more.

autumn (she/they)
link
fedilink
English
41Y

wholeheartedly agree! css has been my main job for going on 15 years because i’ve always enjoyed its quirks. the past 5 years or so have felt like leaps and bounds in terms of how i structure markup and styling. it’s such a fun language to learn. stuff like flex and grid make my work so much easier so i can spend more time on the fun stuff.

But can you vertically and horizontally align something that isn’t text reliably by now?

autumn (she/they)
link
fedilink
English
41Y

yes! flexbox is great for this.

Phoenix [she/they]
link
fedilink
English
31Y

(and grid, which is very very similar to flexbox and uses much of the same rules)

@Jdreben@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
English
31Y

Thank you for this response. Indeed I will. And feel excited to do so :) Look forward to that blog post as well.

Create a post

All things programming and coding related. Subcommunity of Technology.


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 7 users / day
  • 7 users / week
  • 14 users / month
  • 121 users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 296 Posts
  • 2.15K Comments
  • Modlog