Oh, you're not smart enough to know how to write your own code? You need your hand to be held? You need to write your little prompts because reading documentation is too hard? I'll keep my skills while your brain turns to mush.

I have been a programmer for a long time and CSS is still the hardest language to master. There are countless quirks and APIs most people have never heard of that solve extremely specific problems.

For example, using @starting-style with allow-discrete to use display: none on CSS transitions. Knowing that you would need to use this API, what it does, and how to debug your CSS is a skill that will be hard to replace with an LLM because of the fine grained detail needed for CSS. If you do not know how this API works and you need to use it for whatever reason, and then need to adjust your transitions later, it's probably faster to have real CSS skills than to constantly have to prompt an LLM for you.

Perhaps what people forget is that every great product builds on the past in a way to improve it. Buggy software and lame copywriting and kids not learning is not revolutionary. The people continuing to prioritize quality will be the revolutionary ones. Garbage is not revolutionary.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48200823

Points: 8

# Comments: 2

It's my opinion that writing is by far a more effective way to understand the world and the nuance in it. You could, theoretically, watch a video on YouTube, understand it, think about it, and then write out your thoughts and ideas and would be far more educated than someone merely reading a novel.

There is always a strange disconnect with egg head types where they fail to understand that information input is not the only way to become smart. And valuable information exists everywhere: a book, a blog entry, a podcast, a video, a movie, in the real world, etc. Thinking that text, which by the way is one of the most inefficient methods of information consumption, is the only way to be "smart" is incorrect. Critical thinking is what is desperately needed.

I would be surprised if this takes off as site builders are already an incredibly crowded space.

Both magazines and books are valid forms of information consumption and books are not the only way to improve your writing, reading, and understanding of the world.

For every 1 engineer it seems like there are 5 PMs who need to improve KPIs somehow and thus decide auto playing video will improve metrics. It does. It also makes people hate using your website.

I would constantly try to push back against the bullshit they'd put on the page but no one really cares what a random engineer thinks.

I don't think there's any real way to solve this unless we either get less intrusive ad tech or news gets a better business model. Many sites don't even try with new business models, like local classifieds or local job boards. And good luck getting PMs to listen to an engineer talking about these things.

For now, the bloat remains.

You also generally don't want to use position: fixed as it can allow the user to scroll behind the modal.

Also you can just use display: flex with justify-content: center and align-items: center for non absolutely positioned elements.

Just because it uses CSS grid does not make it more "correct" than flexbox.

I also only see one usage of custom @property properties here, which has been one of the most useful things to happen to CSS in years. They have many different use cases, particularly for complex animations.