Forem: Gracrys

Why is people so bad at css?

Gracrys — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 21:53:38 +0000

In many communities i have been, exists certain dislike towards writing css, people get frustrated, or tend to settle towards a certain technology or strategy because it is what certain author says, or is just more comfortable

I will talk a little about myself, Im gracrys, you can call me hazy, i have been working for more than 5 years as UI designer and web developer, lately studying and practicing as UX designer, worked with many frameworks like react, vue, and my favorite svelte, but specialized on interfaces, on interactions, on what the user sees, you can know a little more about the differences between front end developers on the article called the great divide i studied css a lot, css frameworks from the inside, different html and css preprocessors and even advanced html and semantics, like when not to use a div for example, but thats another topic, and, css has become opinionated, so, in summary, im gracrys, and i make web layouts with floats.

Css has become opinionated

Now that i just dropped the scary headline, there is nothing bad with some technology being opinionated, most frameworks are, even javascript or html, but if you get used to those tactics and approaches, your tendency is to look over what you know, to repeat these approaches and struggle over creative technicalities. The design patterns exist for one reason, but they arent a bible to follow, you can adapt your algoritms to the language you are using and can work even better if you trust your capabilities.

And no, i am not a float css developer, i used other technologies too, but overcomplicating things when floats do the work is something you have to ask yourself, most of the time i have read "dont use grid because flex can do the work" and you have to use more steps, more lines, and two @medias to solve the issue.... No thanks. thats where the opinionated part comes, use what you know, and when it does fail, break the glass, and hack the part

hacking the code

"just set the image in absolute and -20 top and it does the work" for the sake of love no. Your code must be comprehensible and meaningfull, if you hack different things and drop different aproaches you are losing consistency, cohesion, your future self will get lost, and pray that something doesnt work. Learning how to solve an issue properly can save a lot of tape.

Trust your methodology

"Yes i use xx methodology, but i just staple some of this some of that and some hacks too"
Or imagine this case you are using certain framework, and your css sheets are full of some other methodology and classes that dont adapt together
methodologies exist after years of research of many people who colectively worked to make that strategy viable to most cases, so trust them, or better, question them. Whatever at the end you can work around them,but do it consistently

Why is css haaard?

Because you are dumb, and we all are. Learning a new thing is always hard, and css is something you probably never seen before, and can get out of hands really easy, practice makes perfection, learn what others people use, dont be afraid of checking others pages, and learn from your mistakes. And more important; take notes.

There are other things...

That i would wish to touch here, take risks, if your mentor, tutor, jedi, etc, uses certain things, ask him why, dont be afraid, he is just more accustomed to certain technologies, over scared of them, if you cant ask, look online, or try yourself, whats the difference.

Frameworks are for lazy people... No. after you get a certain level of knowledge, using certain framework can really agilize your work, and tailwind is nothing magical, imagine having all classes that you need, without writing and rewriting them, wow! thats a library, and you can even make your own, tailwind is an interesting case while it may seem like syntactic sugar, it can add to many classes that you dont need to your code, but using it correctly, oof, that can be rewarding

tl;dr: question your methods, and you results

Does UX designers push forward minimalism

Gracrys — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 21:04:53 +0000

Are we confusing less is more with laziness in design research?

Using templates and premade designs for web development and development in general agilizes the workflow and even if working with a design or just a mvp the template can stay while polishing the work.

For most cases small companies work around design systems that are based around css frameworks, making easy to setup templates, most css frameworks are plain and minimalist, or material design, this is a lack of creativity in a lot of senses, in the other case designer go for a riskless aproach, using easy to go layouts and minimal structures to setup plain and serious pieces which can be programmed in low time, even for wysiwyg resources like wordpress or wix the majority of the designs made with these systems are minimal, even the concept of that software is around minimalism, to work with what you get, what you can see.

taking risks in creating intrincated designs for products can lead to further research and increase in costs, not only for UI designers or product designers but for marketing and UX, and for something that has to deploy fast, you cant take that hassle

So... Is minimalism design and/or plain design systems the result of fast iterations and laziness? Maybe.

Big companies are taking this approach too, because most minimalism designs are most readable, easy to go, and... easy to comprehend...? But isnt the reason for branding to be complex but at the same rememberable? and minimalism lacks in that, a pair of lines and a circle doesnt make an impactful design .

It is an easy to comprehend design, but easy to forget too, lacks impact, doing something different can lead to more impactful results, maximalism is not dead, is there for people who wants give a little more effort for better results and satisfaction.

As designer, you wont be remembered on how many problems did you solve, but how many creative solutions you gave.

I am not against minimalism, i am against overcharging certain trends , or using the wrong tools.

Why i stopped coding?

Gracrys — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 18:51:22 +0000

First of all, Im Hazy or Gracrys, I studied a big part of my life to be the best front end developer i could become, i have like 1 year experience with one different framework at a time, first vue, later react and last year Svelte, and a good pair of months with languages like typescript, reasonml, clojurescript, haskell, etc...

I always loved this path, the road of the developer and programmer, there are too many new things you can learn only to discover how to change your mindset just to end doing the same thing you could do with a less complex technology lol, but the fact that all these frameworks and languages lead to the same results but with different approaches and its own pros and cons, is just, beautiful.

I worked as freelancer, mostly lending a hand in some projects and working with a pair of companies, after some time, finals of last year, i stopped coding, and focused to design, As designers you adapt the requeriments to your design approach, projects flow faster, you set the price per project, etc, as coder, i have had a good pair of bad experiences

As a designer you can set your limitations, if you are a ux designer your work is not to do logos or merchandise, is to abstract an idea, and make it into a skeleton for further work, as coder... not so nice.

Most of the work you can asses as a coder are paid per hour, and being in a not so first world country some prices are not.. "fair"
My work consisted more on fixing other problems, or trying to make platform not suited to "x" process, make more or less suited to "y"
This is not a race, but a marathon, everybody has its strenghs and work at its own pace, sometimes learning a new technology or debugging something cant be solved in 1 hour iteration
The fact that most companies look for full stacks, or personal capable of doing all kind of tasks, while i'm specialized in something and believe me, it have been hard for me to feel comfortable about this, and i think other specialists could agree on that
This is not a work that can be made alone, i have had to study things that werent even part of my career or path to push some projects, things that can be solved by using the right designer, testers, dev ops, etc.
Entering to some project and asking somebody how does it work and they saying "i dont know, last person made it like this and we didnt want to touch it again" Every line of code has its purpose, with documentation and communication your work can be more tender
And the overall situation with courses.

All these free courses make people think three things, that they can learn anything just by watching 2 hours of courses, which is half true, learning half assed things just because you have reached your point in which you "know enough" or, entering that downward spiral of courses.

Not all courses are good, some leave bad practices into anyone like

smelly code
lack of approach on general matters
not a full perspective about certain technology
course dependency and other issues

I learned my path the hard way, learning documentation and trying to grasp more and more of what i could, trying every single html atribute, and learning about it, just because i disliked that storm of divs on my work, learning how to use every single css property, or atleast most of them, i have forgotten how many times i have looked to mdn list of css atributes out of curiosity because of the helpful some obscure css elements can be... or tricky.
At this point i returned to coding again, i still see a good pair of old problems that i tried to run from, But also, i became rusty, i have forgotten a lot of things, and, something i tried tohard to do, that was to learn both parts of the great divide, i, now have forgotten mostly one side, i used to think i could have called myself mid or semi senior developer, but with the lack of knowledge i know have, al i can do is to start again i guess.

There are some other issues that made me turn back and others that made me stand again, but i think it does summarize it pretty well...

Starting your dev journey by making a project

Gracrys — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 02:10:07 +0000

A lot of new developers, designers, writers, start their journey not exactly looking for a job, or to learn some set of skills, but to learn how to make a project, this can be frustrating because you dont know what to learn, which roadmap to take, and you feel anxious trying to learn the smaller necessary amound of knowledge just to get your project up and running, so, i will give you some tips, to encourage and guide you through this journey

The Roadmap

Basically, the set of skills, and the path in how to learn them, i think one of the best steps to take, is, a mentor, someone to find in some online communities to tell you what to learn, maybe how to learn, and which techs do better the job.

- Try to be concise in what you are looking for

If you want to tell that person in private about your project, do it, ask first if accepts to do so, and start detailing the project, this doesn't only gives some info to other person, but helps you summarize your project, and understand it better.

- Try to ask for the better tools to get the job done, and the concepts

At this point, that mentor should tell to first go a, then b and then c, in technologies, if you need to learn some concepts before heading to x tech, etc, for example, to make a todo app you will need to learn: html > css > maybe some css library > javascript > and maybe some javascript library
but it may imply to learn how dom works, some approaches in styling your apps, like design principles and some ux to make a better todo app for the user.

- Dont take an unique answer

Try asking atleast two persons, and if you can, ask why not take b technology over a, or c, this way you can not only get options, but also, spot trolls.

- Ask to google

Ask to google some concepts that you dont understand from the explanations of before, and some summary about the technologies mentioned before

- Make the roadmap

Write it down, you can also try to recognize how much time you gonna take learning x thing, or how much time you willing to spend, maybe try making checkpoints, or write a bitacora.

- Also, dont forget to take notes.

The Prototype

This is something that us as developers try to teach to a lot of people, and eve myself as designer has tried doing, first, make a prototype, try to abstract what do you need to make a viable example of what you want to do, and head on, start by separating parts of your project, this way you can handle smaller problems, and, try to send the not that necessary parts of your project to second phase, so you can focus on what is necessary

Understand when to ask for help, and when to take a break

You can try googling your problems to find if there is a better approach, for example, some questions in the area of development can be solved by looking at stack overflow or quora, in the area of design, there is pinterest try to look for inspiration and youtube to look for tutorials, and, there is even a stack exchange for writers, which can help you solve problems in your writings.
Take rests of 5 minutes after you has finished a long feature, this helps you clear your mind, and even think freely.

Learn to learn

Take some time to know how is your comprehension of different matters, how do you learn different things, maybe you prefer learning when someone explains to you, or by reading a book, try to find some paradigm, and stick to it, and not only that, take the best out of it!

Dont Hesitate

Some thinks take time, and that's ok, take the correct amount of knowledge from the sources you are studying, sometimes you may feel like you are learning too slow, or you dont need x things, but you may not know that, remember that that information can help you further in your road and you may want to know where to look if you forget something

Always take the basics before advancing

This point goes with the one before, try not to take things too difficult, and learn at your own pace, by taking your time to learn some things before the next step, and to take time to absorb the info, you can get onto the advanced later, but always, check the basics.

And dont forget to ask for feedback!

Where to start to make some game?

Gracrys — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 21:55:05 +0000

I would like to make some new project, maybe a game, i like strategy ones, so these are the ones i should be looking to make, and i also know pixel art, but dont know, what to make, where to start, and dont have anybody to start with.... so... dunno

Guys, have any hobby?

Gracrys — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 23:46:41 +0000

I would like to know if some of you are learning something new, have any cool hobby, or a second job that you like doing ^^
I'm mostly a developer but also work as Ui designer, and i use my free time to write, which i have been doing for a long time 😅, also listen to music and write down some critics to the album i click ^^

And lately i have been learning french, i really like the language and would like to write on it too

Developer patterns in communities

Gracrys — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 02:24:36 +0000

In my time in online communities, not only as developer i have seen certain patterns in a lot of different persons, and certain steps in their own learning route that can make them go from someone with almost no knowledge in the career to senior or even drop out.

I have joined many communities, and i am active in others (mostly telegram) and have made some understanding of a lot of mistakes that are done daily by developers, in their career, in their approach to solving problems or in understanding some complexity.

We observe messages in the groups and try to answer the questions and aid anyone in its path, but depending on th focus of the person and the question we can reach certain conclusions and answers, from the classic rude one telling them to go and google the question and pick the first answer or make a detailed explanation in some platform. And this is where the first mistake goes, which is learning to seek for help.

Seeking for help
A lot of people ask for simple things like how to learn react, or how to center an image in css, we ask them to google, or reply with ambiguous answers like "read the docs", i believe that something very important for a developer is learn to filter information, and ask for the right things, while centering an image in css is a simple question with many simple answers, more ambiguous questions can lead to misunderstanding, and explaining the issue will leadto a more clear solution, but also, learning to google, find some good sources of info andknowing where to look can also help. You can always look for your colleagues preferred sources.

Copy Pasters
Following the flow of the answer is not at all viable, A lot of us have fallen into taking the first piece of code from a stack overflow answer, but a newbie mistake is copy pasting without looking for how does the code works, or even making implicit code which makes a tough understanding and debugging in the future. Remember that by not taking into account the variables in implied into some foreign code, making implicit code and hard to understand or not commenting chunks of code blocks the capability for learning, progression and reusability.

Course Addiction
While this may or not be caused by imposter syndrome, the best you can try is making a project as soon as you learn a new technology, having courses mount on top of others only distract yourself from improving in certain area, but also getting some route of course can bring you the right knowledge and methodology about some technology.

Jumping Between Topics
Try learning one or two things at day to have that neurons on check, but learning different things in a short period of time can mislead your flow or ideas but also make you forget past things, this also comes with a little more backstory of specialist vs fast learners but remember to focus on learning enough in one thing to solve most problems you can encounter before passing to the next thing.

Knowing When to Rest
Pressing yourself, Not knowing when to take a rest, is important, taking a few minutes apart or leaving some problem aside because the solution is not that obvious can help you improve as developer, but also taking a walk, a deep breath, and sleeping sooner can help you feel more refreshed, sometimes you want to take things fast and run on your projects, but, take a time to meditate the things before. With that we go to another point

Premeditate
Before making your next move or copy pasting that line of code, think about the issues and the behavior that results of said code, sometimes a new feature can lead into sm other failures, that is why you have to take problems at minimum, solve them, and try out the solution

Other issues like not having a roadmap or focus in your career can confuse your path and leave you hanging without a proper knowledge in some matter or area of development, or even techonology, always have a plan, and a backup plan

And more important...
Remember that, you may be into this for the money, or for the things you can do with these confusing lines of code, but, remember that programming is just a tool, and going all out in some career that you do not like or understand at all can feel... dull, empty, take heart in to what you do, you are not just a keyboard monkey, but a creator, a problem solver, a developer, and other things that you can do, think in the big picture.

If you feel like you are one of these, atleast you should know what to take as next step, also, comment your ideas, opinions below ^^

My transition around IDES

Gracrys — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 00:24:47 +0000

I have a pair of years working as Web developer, Mostly in the area of front end, and i started with Sublime text, since that time, despite i have tried many others Ides and text editors i would always reccommend st, but, why did i change my ide?

Well, At my work they used vscode and they always would say that vscode is the sixth monument for Programmers, ok, I didnt have a reason to try it, despite it had, or still has the advantage with git and when doing merges, linters and all these fancy plugins... apart from that did not look so amusing

In my community of programmers they used VIM or Emacs, so, why not to give them a try, and my first experience with them was by using OniVim 1, And started learning what Vim could offer, commands, .vimrc, etc, great experience, sadly, onivim had some issues when installing syntax plugins, (havent tried the v2 yet) and after trying some more Vim, it felt really slow, also has a slower starting time than sublime text, so i returned to sublime, at that moment i was learning haskell, i got reccommended Emacs

My experience with Emacs was small, it has a really big issue, an ugly interface... 😂, despite that i had to reconfigure my mindset to use M-X not for deleting but for other things, and i felt comfy with all these shortcuts on windows, linux and other softwares, so, i returned back to vim which, the hard part was installing vim on windows and its vimrc, actually i keep using it, and tried vscode.

With vscode it was weird, the interface is kind of distracting for me, so i hid a lot of things, instaled vim mode and went on, used it for many projects, but having firefox, edge, vscode and figma started to felt heavy on my pc, thing that did not happen with vim, I needed some gui, but also the perks of vim mode (which i tried before on sublime and did not work for me), i find it hard to use vim for large projects with a lot of folders and files.

And this is how i went back to sublime again along with vintage, im using sublime for bigger projects and vim for other stuff like writing the drafts for this one article.

Honorary Mentions

NeoVim, slow start than vim, and some issues on windows, despite it was easier installing plugins on it (same with emacs).