Learning the hard way that CSS, is in fact, a necessary skill.
Most of experience with CSS was through libraries like Bootstrap, Reactstrap, Bulma, and Tailwind.css.
In this recent project, I had to Flexbox and Flexbox quickly. I have a Wes Bos grid and flexbox course sitting in the course library I have of his. I never watched either, thinking I was mainly going to JavaScript the f out of things with little consideration to the styling.
I like beautiful things but CSS intimidates me, as it does a lot of JavaScript devs. You know the gif I’m talking about. I just recently shared this gif on a site complaining about how hard CSS is.
I have a metric heckton of respect for CSS mavens and masters. Because I suck at it. Give me the logic in a project and I’ll get it done. Tell me to skew a div and I am like what are a skew? What means degrees? I am terrible at complex layouts like this.
CS web dev classes
I took an intro web dev class about 4 years ago and learned a lot about CSS, the box model, specificity, the cascade. You know what’s tragic though? Not practicing it and instead reaching for a UI library that would make my projects pretty.
It’s unfortunate, not just for me, but for all devs and engineers that a lot of us lack the ability to see CSS as a valuable tool for developing web apps, not a UI library, but actual CSS. Learning it is valuable, even if you want to play logician with heavy handed JavaScript.
Project near done
This freelance project is nearly finished, well, at least my part of it. I learned that I still have a ton to learn about CSS. The project is on a hella tight deadline and it would be one thing if it wasn’t but it is and so I’m probably getting moved off it.
I don’t feel that bad about it though because I know where I need to improve. It was also really hectic moving as fast as we did. I feel bad for the senior front end engineer on that team because she’s got to put out fires that I couldn’t imagine putting out. Not now, anyway.
Experience
I’ve gained valuable insight into what my strengths and weaknesses are. If the project moves on without me I am taking a week to just relax and apply to jobs. While I’m at it, I am going to consume Wes Bos’ CSS courses because well. I’m bad it and it won’t ever go out of style.
