60 replies

1. Zach Leatherman moments later

   (inspired by a conversation with @avidlarge)

   1. David Large 4 hr later

      @zachleat It needs more divs Zach. Just divs all the way down.

      1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

         @avidlarge I too, like turtles

2. Aral Balkan 9 min later

   @zachleat Satan approves this message.

   1. Zach Leatherman 16 min later

      @aral oh damn what are you doing in georgia

3. Andrew Feeney 23 min later

   @zachleat Honestly this fine. I can read that code. I can find what I need to edit it quickly and easily. It’s right next to the markup it is coupled to. I can predict exactly what my changes will do and what code will be affected. I can rest easy knowing I haven’t broken something somewhere else. I have this wrapped in a component for easy reuse.

   1. Andrew Feeney 25 min later

      @zachleat I agree it’s ugly, but honestly, html is generally pretty ugly. I’m going to get my job done more easily and sleep better at night so that’s a win in my book. And yes, I do know CSS. YMMV.

      1. Mike McCaffrey 6 hr later

         @andrewfeeney @zachleat I'm sorry that life has hurt you so much that this seems like an acceptable state of affairs.

         1. Andrew Feeney 6 hr later

            @mikemccaffrey @zachleat Is my trauma that obvious?

            1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

               @andrewfeeney @mikemccaffrey time for all of us to join group therapy folks, pick your time on my calendly 😅

   2. Zach Leatherman 26 min later

      @andrewfeeney how many stars out of 5 is a “this is fine” rating

      1. Andrew Feeney 28 min later

         @zachleat 4/5. Show me 5/5 and I’ll enthusiastically embrace it.

         1. Andrew Feeney 30 min later

            @zachleat Actually make that 3/5. 4/5 would be not ugly piles of classes concatenated in a string. 5/5 would be requires no external dependencies to work with (I.e. part of the web standards spec).

            1. Zach Leatherman 40 min later

               @andrewfeeney I agree with 3/5!

   3. Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊) 32 min later

      @andrewfeeney @zachleat Well I can't read it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

      I'll happily cop to being cognitively impared so that utility-classes-gone-wild can be seen as an accessibility violation. If all of this were in a co-located <style> tag as vanilla CSS, I could read that easily. 😊

      1. Andrew Feeney 37 min later

         @jaredwhite @zachleat Yes, I agree it’s not perfect. Accessibility is certainly a valid concern that I have little insight into and I am not surprised to hear that Tailwind is wanting in this regard.

   4. Private reply 2 hr later
      1. Private reply 2 days later
   5. cuan_knaggs 9 hr later

      @andrewfeeney then simplify the build and deployment by just using inline styles @zachleat

      1. Andrew Feeney 10 hr later

         @mensrea @zachleat I honestly write a lot of inline styles.

4. Cory 43 min later

   @zachleat how am i supposed to copy and paste that

   1. Zach Leatherman 47 min later

      @cory paste the alt text into an LLM

      1. Cory 47 min later

         @zachleat well it needs more classes so I can do both at the same time

5. Matthew Martin 1 hr later

   @zachleat Classy

   1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

      @mistersql technically accurate and accurate to etiquette too 😅

6. Larry Mason 1 hr later

   @zachleat

   Damn! That doesn't look like COBOL at all.

7. Mike Aparicio 1 hr later

   @zachleat How’d you get this slide from my CSS talk? 😂

   1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

      @peruvianidol check your stream, mike—it’s still broadcasting

8. Magitism 1 hr later

   @zachleat I need a gif of Tim Berners-Lee turning towards the camera crying.

9. Jeremy Bunting 2 hr later

   @zachleat tailwind + LLMs would be a mllm scheme, brilliant

10. Omnivore 3 hr later

    @zachleat

    You spelled "Hello World" wrong.

11. Private reply 4 hr later
    1. Private reply 16 hr later
12. Mike McCaffrey 6 hr later

    @zachleat This toot needs a content warning. I am getting increasingly agitated just looking at all the utility classes.

    I can just imagine the client asking message sections to have a slate 800 background instead of 900 and having to find and change it in dozens of files.

13. nrk 7 hr later

    @zachleat markup pollution is thing

14. nrk 8 hr later

    @zachleat me throwing utility classes in markup like

15. Alex 11 hr later

    @zachleat tailwind momentado

16. Lippe 13 hr later

    @zachleat Where do you get to when you click on that inner div? It sure is a button, isn't it?!

    1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

       @Lippe the tag says <div> so yes it is a button

17. catraxx 15 hr later

    @zachleat oh no

18. Bruce Taylor 15 hr later

    @zachleat - My eyes! 🫣

19. thurti 16 hr later

    @zachleat When did this actually start, that developers here have become so passive aggressive and condescending towards the work of other developers. I thought it was just a twitter thing.

    1. Zach Leatherman 16 hr later

       @thurti I think there is a lot to unpack here and I don’t go into making this joke without self awareness of what’s happening.

       But I would ask: when did tooling tribalism become so that we can’t critique code? That a mere lighthearted humorous critique of code is a personal attack?

       Finally the thing I always try to evaluate before making a joke like this: is it punching down? And no, I would very strongly argue that it is not.

       1. thurti 18 hr later

          @zachleat Sorry for being passive aggressive myself, I didn't mean to get personal. We should definitely criticize code. And there is a lot to criticize in this example.

          I just got the feeling from reading the comments that all the tailwind and js bashing is becoming a cult itself.

          1. Zach Leatherman 18 hr later

             @thurti no worries!

             Yeah, I can see that criticism too. I have thought about it a lot. It’s easy to dismiss the criticism as a Nickleback style level-of-popularity pushback, but I think it goes deeper.

             I think Tailwind in particular receives a lot of deserved criticism because they go pretty headstrong in their marketing almost to the point of being anti-CSS—specifically the line “best practices don’t work” that’s been on their home page for many years.

             1. thurti 20 hr later

                @zachleat Yeah, they have some bold statements on their website.

                The more I think about it, I feel like the whole thing is just a clever business model.

                1. Zach Leatherman 21 hr later

                   @thurti for sure—and for me it’s a social cost for monetary gain 😬

       2. Henry Bley-Vroman 22 hr later

          @thurti thanks for saying this. @zachleat given the last month's widely read anti-Tw articles I see only "this tool is bad". What's the critique? I see an inexpert CSS author, unnecessary height styles, and not using Prettier. But I'm confident the joke isn't "this person is passionate but a junior".

          1. Zach Leatherman 22 hr later

             @olets @thurti just to be clear the above code was taken from tailwind’s home page. But just in case you aren’t familiar, it’s a callback to the classic “graphic design is my passion” meme

             1. thurti 23 hr later

                @zachleat @olets Oh, I didn't know that. I definitely had a lack of context here 😀 . Thanks for clarifying.

                1. Henry Bley-Vroman 1 day later

                   @thurti @zachleat same TIL 👍 So no critique just “this is bad web development”. I don’t see it in the homepage source, _but_ I am delighted to learn that the homepage doesn’t use the official prettier plugin 😆

          2. thurti 23 hr later

             @olets @zachleat some valid points of criticism imo https://nuejs.org/blog/tailwind-misinformation-engine/

             Via https://phpc.social/@davidbisset/112101086394573055

          3. Henry Bley-Vroman 1 day later

             @thurti @zachleat Tailwind bashing is interesting. As an experienced CSS author Tailwind fan it's easy to spot which anti takes are likely written by people who haven't spent time with it, because I and everyone I know who's gotten to know it was a hater first, had the same opinions, and found they didn't hold up (some are still anti for other reasons) 1/2

             1. Henry Bley-Vroman 1 day later

                @thurti @zachleat Good that not everyone uses/likes it. My Tailwind conversion changed how I see takes like that, about Tailwind or other tools. Dragging tells people who don't have personal experience with it to look down on people who like it, and sets them up for seeing "people who like this are wrong" daily. In retrospect I've uncritically picked up plenty of dev opinions that way, and probably passed them on to juniors. Maybe Drupal is good 🤯 2/2

20. Dana 22 hr later

    @zachleat gonna tell my kids this is eleventy

    1. Zach Leatherman 22 hr later

       @superterrific I deserve this

    2. Matthias Ott 22 hr later

       @superterrific @zachleat the documentation button

       1. Zach Leatherman 22 hr later

          @matthiasott @superterrific dark:how-dare-[you]

21. Matthias Ott 22 hr later

    @zachleat

    1. Zach Leatherman 22 hr later

       @matthiasott (incredible)