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If you think CSS is some kind of "problem" that needs solving with frameworks, perhaps first consider that maybe the problem is that you don't know how to use it
@sophie shout out to all the "hardcore developers" who don't understand CSS or SQL because they're not procedural 
@sophie modern CSS is such a blessing, omg. I've written CSS since I got online in 2006 or so. and, just, omg.
@sophie Would you say the same about git? Or shell?
@ravigupta using a wrapper on top of git on my own machine doesn't a) make it hard for other developers to use and b) pollute my website's source code with garbage
@sophie If it’s about your use-case then you can ignore CSS frameworks too. How can another developer choosing a CSS framework pollute the source code of your site?
@ravigupta depends if I as a developer have to go and work on it
@sophie Removed my cynical reply. I understand and share the frustration. For me this has manifested in the form of Gherkin, and other wrappers around selenium; and currently in the form of frontend devs who have started their journey with React, and have little idea about plain HTML and CSS. Tailwind is the antithesis to what I believe frontend code should be like - https://html-first.com/
@sophie I'm happy that flexbox was added though.
@sophie I can kiiiind of see why sass and less exist, but frameworks like tailwind make me annoyed af because it's just CSS with more steps
@sophie I use CSS, I wouldn't say I'm good at it, but I use it and copy a ton of stuff from stack overflow
@sophie I think that of most frameworks, for any language.
@sophie CSS solves some problems and creates others, which is true of basically everything in web development.
Also tailwind is amazing fite me
@sophie I rather think it's a problem I don't want to get bothered with. Very different.
@sophie I’m not sure this is all that “hot”. Frameworks/abstracting that away is a direct acknowledgement that you won’t have an org full of css experts who will always be on the same page.
@joshhunt I mean, one hopes web developers will be competent at CSS because it’s a primary web technology used in websites
@joshhunt this toot is literally aimed at people who consider CSS a problem, not people who use frameworks. There’s lots of types of frameworks and some poop out normal vanilla stylesheets while some fill the DOM with stuff
As with everything, the technology is fine. It’s the realities of “people”, in a larger org, that’s the problem.
@sophie idt frameworks solve problems for me but atleast it saves some time and effort
️ @sophie hashtag fart.css (err... tailwind)
@sophie
And like most problems that require personal reflection and growth, I want someone else to solve it.
@sophie I still wish I knew what problem they are trying to solve. Having seen the 6months/year aftermath of some of these frameworks and libraries that drastically alter the way you write CSS and utilize it (like avoiding the cascade entirely), it's a shitshow. It's already in a "please lets burn it down and start over" state. It never actually allows people that don't know CSS well to write good software.
@sophie And I still keep going back to that idea that "well I don't know CSS so these are helpful to me". Why is CSS the only part of the stack people are ok with doing that? "Oh I don't know JS well so I added a layer on top so I don't have to figure it out because I don't have time" "Oh I don't know DynamoDB well so I added an abstraction in front of it that makes it hard for anyone that does know DynamoDB to contribute to my project" like, what.
@mattwilcox @sophie It's a bizarre level of gaslighting just to safeguard their decisions. Like I've *SEEN* and experienced these projects across multiple teams. It's often why I get asked to work on these projects. The styling layer of the stack ends up gross, inconsistencies with how styles are authored, weird hacky overrides, more code then necessary, annoyed designers because now the codebase is "too hard" to change to meet their designs. Like, my eyes and experience aren't lying to me.
SCSS 7-in-1 architecture with a bundler worked best with designers and developers in a relaunch so far.
@hbuchel @sophie People do do that with JS though; see: typescript. Or react, really.
My main wishlist item with CSS is that there was a simple "use strict" style directive that would force all browser styling to be ignored, eliminating the need for resets and such.
Essentially since variables were introduced and supported, I haven't seen a value to the frameworks beyond edge case style support.
@fennix @sophie I mean, yeah. I've also expressed my dislike of those, though lol Typescript also has alternatives for improving DX that don't involve changing the authoring experience for JS. And React, well, see any of my posts about React. My gripe with some CSS frameworks is that they fundamentally change the way you write CSS and the expectations for how it should work.
@sophie mmmmmm SPICY!
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️ @sophie "maybe we should train up on this 6-year old css feature, then" is proving to be an incredibly controversial take
@sophie CSS is my favourite part of the HTML/CSS/JS trifecta, and the more I use it, the more I love it. It's so weird to me that people make websites and don't bother learning it properly. It's a joy, especially now.
You've probably read this blog post, but I'm posting it anyway because it's so good: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/tailwind-and-the-femininity-of-css
Sadly, I think she's right that for some the fact that women are often good at CSS means CSS must be bad. (Because girls are icky or something, I guess?)
@sophie whatever you do, you end up with a framework... it's either one you develop for that specific project or team, or one you use across many projects
It's got little to do with familiarity of the underlying tooling, and we've been over this countless times in other contexts
If a widely-adopted framework makes it quicker/easier/cheaper to for you to get from A to B, use it
@simonhamp @sophie Yes, and CSS is a framework that is widely adopted.
@sophie I know I am bad-at and hate and mistrust CSS (and a bunch of other UX/CX items). So any time I see a framework trying to help me out with some of the trickier bits and a 'solid enough default with easy to understand common diversions'... I am eager to trust and reluctant to verify (knowing I need to reverse those things).
(That being said, Twitter Bootstrap was a godsend and still sorta is)
@sophie those with this attitude also have zero knowledge of HTML and only ever use divs #cowboyWeBuilders
@sophie The only solution to this "problem" is a reasonable understanding of this word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cascade#English
@sophie And it's not even that complicated. I would even argue, CSS is fairly easy compared to most other concepts in IT. It's descriptive, consistent and has almost no abstractions, still even experienced developers sometimes treat it like some magic creature. Frameworks will take away some heavy lifting, but I agree, they are not the solution to no knowing at least a reasonable amount about CSS.
@sophie Ou yes. I mean, preprocessors are cool, but I'm glad a lot of those features find their way into css, like nesting.
But Frameworks....... Tailwind, my goddamn nemesis.