Before he gets into the nitty gritty though, there was a line that really stood out to me:
But the code of the web is not all the code of classical computer science, and should not be judged on the same terms. HTML is the code of writers, and CSS the code of graphic designers. Writers and designers are best positioned to write those kinds of code.
You're worrying about the wrong thing if you're trying to learn it all
There are a million and one things that we need to learn in order to be a front-end developer, and it seems like every 30 seconds there is another new thing that we need to add to our arsenal.
Learning new things can be fun, but when it seems like the list of new things we need to learn just keeps on growing, it can be overwhelming.
And there is another big issue. While we’re off learning all this new stuff, how the hell can we remember all the things we’ve already learned?
I often get asked, either through a DM or email from a follower, or sometimes as a YouTube comment, asking the best strategy to memorize everything.
The truth is, I don’t memorize anything. I remember things because I use them all the time, and because I get to focus primarily on CSS. The more I use them, the better I get with them and the more fun I have with them. But I don’t remember everything.
There are two different times that we look things up:
When we are learning something new
When we have a problem that needs fixing asap
When we're students* we're all in on learning. This is when we can take the time to learn things on a deeper level.
by students, I mean anyone who is actively trying to learn something new, be them actual students, or learning something new on the side
Then there are times when reality sets in. We're working on a project that has a deadline and something isn't working. We need to find a solution, and it doesn't matter how it works, all that matters is that it works!
One problem I see with students who are learning something new is that they're often happy when something works. It doesn't matter if they don't know why it works, but they are happy that it works and that means it's time to move on.
When I made my first course, a deep dive into advanced web design and Sass (which is currently closed as I try to fix it up), I looked into a ton of ways I could host my course.
And since that course and my Responsive Web Design Bootcamp were released, I get tons of people asking me to put my content on Udemy as well.
I understand why people would like me to do that, but unless their platform has a major shift, I never will use them. In this post, I'll explain why.
I realize for a lot of people this might go into too much detail, but hopefully, it can help anyone who is thinking about making their own course at one point in the future.
There were a lot of reasons that I didn't go with Udemy
I looked into self-hosting it by building it out of a WordPress theme. I looked at platforms such as Teachable, Teachery, Thinkific, Podia, and more (in the end I went with Podia, but that could be a discussion for another day! Also, that is an affiliate link 😊).
Recently I was listening to an episode of the Shop Talk Show podcast where they were talking about the recent State of CSS survey (if you haven't seen this site, even if you're not interested in the results, it's worth checking out because it's so fun!).
It was a fun episode, but on top of that, it made me realize how much CSS has grown up in a short period of time.
It's still not that old of a language, but it seemed to be a little stagnant for awhile, and then suddenly we had all these new features.
One of the problems with the syntax being so basic is that it gives off the impression that it is a simple language. It's simple in how it's written, but it can be downright complex in how it actually works.
People are tricked into thinking it's simple and then, when it doesn't work they expect it to, they say it's broken.
CSS is an interesting language. It’s fun to see how different solutions arrive to deal with certain situations, and how those solutions sometimes evolve — something like grip-gap evolving into gap and making it’s way into flexbox, for example.
One interesting set of values has always been initial and the much lesser known unset. Both of these don’t exactly work how you think they would though, often giving you unexpected results. It would seem that revert is here to help with that.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at all three, exploring their similarities and differences, and we'll wrap it up with when revert might come in handy.
5 awesome DevTool features to help you debug your CSS
When I started created websites for fun in the late 90s, we didn’t have many tools that would help us solve our CSS problems. There was probably some validator out there I didn’t know about (it was just a hobby for me at the time), but it was a lot of simply figuring out what was wrong with your file. Luckily for all of us, it’s so much easier now.
The reason Firebug was huge is it opened up a new way for us to be able to debug our CSS. Devtools have evolved a lot since then (as has CSS!), so in this post, we’ll be taking a look at 5 awesome devtool features, from ones that make your life so much better and easier to ones that are just really cool.
