[when starting out with web dev] Just use bootstrap!

Please don't. I teach web dev now, and when people learn a framework initially, they often get a warped and incomplete understanding of how things work. They spend their time learning the framework instead of learning the systems they're actually working with, and then when the want to do something the framework can't do, they're just at a loss.

Don't get me wrong, bootstrap and jquery and so on have their places, but those places aren't when you're just starting out.

Very good point! I also sometimes teach web dev at the local university, and I strongly agree with you. Pure JS first, then jQuery once they understand the basics.

Exactly, I agree!

It's seems particularly sad to me when I'm talking to backend developers who I work with that are always bragging with their mad 'CSS skills', but the first thing they do when they have to add some styling to an existing site that uses proper custom CSS is pulling fucking bootstrap in.

What the fuck, you degenerated morons?

I personally love the purecss library as a compromise.

It's a super light modular bootstrap alternative, more a small collection of responsive helper classes than a style framework. It optionally comes with some button, form element and table styles, but you can easily cut those out as well.

I disagree. CSS is garbage, anything that can make the pain easier should be strongly encouraged. Foe example, 90% of people don't need to learn how to horseback when they could learn to drive an automatic car, or ideally an electric car where gears don't exist. Pure CSS is not even at the level of an a manual car...

Absolutely. I'm teaching some of my junior devs Haskell right now, and a few of them had the initial question, "What framework are we going to use?"

"We're not using frameworks."

Them: "What? What?!"

"Because you'll learn the framework, and not proper software engineering skills."

I'm sure they'll get it eventually.

@AlexDeLarge the main problem is exactly because of what it is: Cascading Style Sheets. The problem is that everything cascades... Styles that affect a higher level of the dom trickle down to the lower levels and you need to always be cognisant of that and reset things as needed. It would be the equivalent of every class inherited from the previous class you created in a oop language and you have to go out of your way to make the side effects you don't want benign... It is a complete pain if you don't have a framework. Thankfully IOS and Android learned from this and making UIs for those things are significantly less Painful as a result; everything is standalone and you just compose then into the patterns you want, mostly drag and drop.

@windlessuser if you organize your styles using scss, that would greatly help you avoid any conflicts in styling.

Plus it has tons of improvements such as nested styling, variables etc.

@TerriToniAX @AlexDeLarge I'm sorry for both of you that whatever this is hasn't been resolved yet. Downvoted both of you because your comments quickly got off topic; please don't take it personally. Hope you can work out your differences!

Y'all stop being asses to eachother, seriously
@TerriToniAX @AlexDeLarge

Learn CSS, struggle with it, learn bootstrap, give it up, explore other libraries, give those up, decide to manually do everything with SASS

I'm all for trearting your fellow ranters with respect. How about cleaning up this mess? :)