For me, `class”btn btn-primary btn-primary—title”` says close to nothing about the underlying CSS - I have to go look that up. But `class=“rounded p-2 flex gap-2 items-center font-semibold bg-aqua-300 text-white”` actually tells me something: “this button has rounded corners, padding of 8px on all sides, it’s got flex display with a gap of 8px, items are aligned along the center of the cross axis, font weight is 500, the background is a lighter shade of aqua and the text is white.”
What shade of aqua, exactly? I couldn’t tell you, but my IDE sticks a color block right next to any Tailwind color class. Is that rounded corner a radius of 6px or 8px? I don’t remember off the top of my head, but again my IDE will tell me with a quick hover of the “rounded” class.
To me, the first set of classes is “incomprehensible” because those names, while semantically descriptive, tell me nothing about what the classes actually apply - they describe what they’re styling, not _how_ they’re styling it.
But the long list of Tailwind classes tells me exactly what they do and how they do it, and if for some reason I need to go beyond the LSP to figure out what a class does, the Tailwind docs are miles easier to search than grepping the codebase for “.btn-primary \{“, not that I’ve run into that. In fact, the Tailwind LSP will compute selectors like “[&>div]:hover:border-2” and show you the actual generated CSS selector right in the hover window so you can see what the eventual output will be - it’s not just a dumb lookup of “m-2 is the margin 8px class”
How many web designer (ie. strictly HTML + CSS) roles are out there anymore? Anytime a position is posted with "HTML and CSS" in the requirements, you can almost guarantee a Javascript framework of some sort is in there as well.
That’s not the point - it’s been at least a decade since “web designer” means doing graphic/interaction design, and not coding in HTML and CSS.
What they are saying is that, in the same way a car designer cannot do a great job without having decent knowledge of aerodynamics and the physics involved, good design for the web requires some understanding of the underlying technologies.
Desktop publication software killed many jobs. I worked for a publication where I had colleagues that used to typeset, place images, and use a camera to build pages by hand. That required a team of people. Once Quark Xpress and the like hit the scene, one person could do it all, faster.
In terms of illustration, the tools moved from pen and paper to Adobe Illustrator and Aldus / Macromedia Freehand. Which I'd argue was more of a sideways move. You still needed an illustrators skillset to use these tools.
The difference between what I just described and LLM image generation is the tooling changed to streamline an existing skillset. LLM's replace all of it. Just type something and here's your picture. No art / design skill necessary. Obviously, there's no guarantee that the LLM generated image will be any good. So, I'm not sure the Photoshop analogy works here.
Although this article references the 90's, it reminded me of the truly vibrant web design scene of the early 2000's. I was a graphic design (print work back then) student / early in my career at the time. Sites like k10k, Newstoday, Praystation, and many others jump-started my interest in writing software by way of web design. Flash especially.
There was a network of sites (like those mentioned above), that had feeds of interesting work done on the web. Much of it was purely an exercise in creativity. The single 1024x768 resolution target let folks go wild without the constraints of responsiveness that we see today.
While I realize that the web had to evolve, I have a lot of nostalgia for web design from those days. The "design" part of it was really centered around artistic expression, and still had a lot of influence from graphic design.
I have 4 pairs of Allen Edmonds shoes. The oldest pair is 6 or 7 years old. With some light care (conditioning / polishing) they've held up very well. To address another comment about comfort: They're quite uncomfortable at first. Over time the leather (and cork insoles) mold to your foot. Making them comfortable.
These are leather dress shoes though. As far as I know, this doesn't exist in the athletic shoe world. Considering the materials used in athletic shoes, I don't know how a "repairable" athletic shoe could exist without some serious re-engineering.
Considering all the advancements that Vanilla JS and CSS have made in recent years (plus exciting features like animating "display: none" that are almost fully adopted), I think templated HTML on the server + JS where it's needed, makes more sense than ever. And, that's coming from someone who largely makes their living from React.
Like the author, I've been doing frontend in one way or another for 20 years. The ecosystem, churn, and the absolute juggling act of sync'ing state between the frontend and backend is batshit crazy.
I recently started a proof of concept project using Go templates and HTMX. I'm trying to approximate building a UI with "components" like I would with React. There's still a lot of rough edges, but it's promising. I'm still not sure I need HTMX tbh. I've started managing event listeners myself, and I think I prefer it.
Interestingly enough, managing complex UI state that's based on user roles and permissions is so much easier on the server. Just send the HTML that the user is allowed to see. Done.
That said, React, Vue, et. al has sooo much steam. I don't know how a collective shift in thinking would even begin. Especially considering all the developers who have never known anything but frontend frameworks as a way to build a UI.
I'm in an area of the country in which he won easily in the polls. Whenever I hear the "run the country like a business" line, I always ask "What's the product? And who is the customer?". I haven't received an actual answer yet.
And how does it make a profit and what does it do with a profit?
Perhaps ask if they think we should hire more LEOs to sit on the roads to write more traffic tickets to generate revenue to make profits to pay for more things including salaries and bonuses to our government officials... Like how businesses run (paying bonuses for being more profitable). What perverse incentives and outcomes might that lead to?
> I went from being able to purchase just the resistor I needed to a $15 pack of 1,000 resistors I'll never use
The last time I bought resistors from Radio Shack, which was well over a decade ago, they were $1 a piece. A piece! While I get your sentiment, you can buy resistors in packs of 100 for roughly the same price you used to get 5 for.
But what if you don't need 100 resistors? If I want an oddball resistor size, it may be for just one project/experiment. Now I have to store the remaining 99 somewhere or throw them away. I'd rather pay $1 for one resistor than $15 for 100.
Best bet for an electronic anything right now is Tayda. They sell in hobbyist sizes. You'll still need to buy 10 resistors, but that's kind of reasonable.
When I worked in design we used to have a big book of color swatches for CMYK (and pantone). Your screen was always lying to you, even if you calibrated it. Plus colors looked different on coated / uncoated paper.
