Just use css

[badlydrawnrob]

Note to self: Anki will use css, html, minimal compiling, minimal code.

After struggling with bugs via Stylus lang compiler (stalled or dead project), Jeet (dead project), Less css, a little Sass and reading around, I've come to the conclusion to just use css wherever possible.

• Yes, the syntax can be ugly
• Yes, it's pretty hard to remember sometimes
• Yes, it's not perfect
• Yes, preprocessors have gone a long way to pushing css forward

But, all this comes at a cost:

• High cognitive load for (in my opinion) little gain.
• Complicated functions and cleverness seem simple on the surface, but obfuscate code.
• CSS is not a programming language and we should probably stop treating it so.¹
• Visual styling is different to logic, so unless there's a huge overhaul of language design (or something new comes along) I think we have to be ok with CSS being a less-than-perfect language.²
• Packages, software, languages come and go — so be careful what you depend on.³

One of the first books I read on web design was "Don't make me think" which is all about Keeping It Simple Stupid! At this point in my life, I have zero motivation to keep up with trends — the less time I spend on a computer, the better. Life is there to be enjoyed not obsessing over minutia.

The web moves in cycles like any trend, but it seems humans have a tendency to overcomplicate for the sake of "progress". Sometimes complexity is necessary, but more often than not, we can strip it out for a far more simple, sane, alternative.

Footnotes

1. You could argue the opposite and I'm not trying to belittle a CSS coder in any way — it's really flippin' hard to get right once your UI and state become complex, so a good CSSer is worth it. I however, tend to try and keep things simple — I'll save Material Design for mobile apps (if at all). ↩

2. And use it in a light way, not trying to be too clever. I don't like Javascript, and less, sass, etc feel like using javascript — messy. I understand a little Lisp and Python, so I'm not a complete philistine, but trying to wrestle CSS into a javascript-like language I feel is a mistake. I like the way Elm lang is headed and admire it's creator's ethos, but I'm not 100% convinced with elm/html or elm-css either. Wherever possible, keep things simple and just use plain HTML and CSS! ↩

3. CSS has moved on and now includes some functionality preprocessors were trying to solve — even nesting is now in fashion! ↩

[badlydrawnrob]

I also want to say a quick fuck you to IE6+ (I'm enjoying Edge's read aloud feature, however); and a tentative introduction to Cut Code Down which has some (very opinionated, but) interesting ideas about code minimalism.