Last week I posted a poll on Twitter about respecting CSS as a programming language. I don't want this to become a discussion whether CSS is or isn't a programming language (apparently it is a scripting language, thanks for the comments). I just want to learn how many of you respect it in terms of writing it correctly and responsibly.
So, what is your answer?
Latest comments (92)
IF no one cares, why ask?
And consensus among CS is neither HTML not CSS are proper programming languages.
That doesn't means that their specifications should not be respected and followed.
I have used HTML from Winter 1992-93 and have ALWAYS tried to respect the specifications behind HTML and CSS when it later came to remove the font tag and table missuse at sites.
So no, a specifications doesn't need to be a programming language to earn respect from programmers.
And No, many/most programmers are good programmets even with vital and huge black holes in their CS knowledge.
That doesn't make them worse programmer.
I also know good CS researchers that have equally huge holes in how one write good programs.
Computer science and being a scientists in that fieald is about understandings and searching for new ways of solving problems.
Being a programming is about using good practices and technologies to solve problems. Not search for understandings and new ways of solving problems.
They overlap, but not totalt.
So again, neither HTML nor CSS are programming languages, and that is fine.
They solve a real problem.
I don't know why you called CSS as programming language ? while it's a Stylesheet Language !
The title was written to reiterate the tweet this post originated from. That being said, the very last thing written by the writer of the post was,
"I just want to learn how many of you respect it in terms of writing it correctly and responsibly".
So those of us who took the "technically correct train" not only missed their stop but were going in the wrong direction in the first place. This post was not about CSS being a language, it was about caring to do it correctly and responsibly, ie "giving a sh*t".
Yes, the train went in the wrong track the minuter the author added Programming language to the mix.
HTML are languages, but not programming languages.
There is a difference between programming and coding language. In my opinion CSS is a coding language.
I'm not sure what you're getting at.
You've very deliberately used the word "respect" several times, and phrased the response choices in a leading manner - it's a dark pattern ("confirmshaming") meant to push people away from the negative response, and it'll skew your results.
CSS has some features of a programming language and some of a descriptive one.
In addition, the way people use CSS is often through a higher-level abstraction, like a framework (e.g. Bootstrap), a preprocessor (e.g. Sass), CSS-in-JS (e.g. React) or through applying attributes directly to DOM elements in Javascript rather than writing a separate stylesheet.
It's enmeshed in web development, to the point that a lot of frameworks use HTML elements attributes to describe the page look and feel and plug in a pre-made CSS library instead. I guess you could say that non-semantic styling is disrespecting CSS if you were stretching for a soundbite.
I respect CSS, I work intimately with that every day, I wrote libraries about it, but it's not a programming language and I'm not saying that in a dimishing way, it's simply not, like in "the color blue is not red".
From my standpoint, css is a programming language in that it determines how the content on a page or a program is displayed on the UX/UI. It has its own syntax just like the python, c#, c++, JavaScript etc.
Yes, we all can define our own meaning to Words.
It doesn't help promote understandings through.
Hi Silvestar,
I’m not sure it’s about respect. I’d say it’s firstly more about competence. Does a developer have the necessary knowledge and skill to produce CSS firstly that works, and then is as efficient as they can make it with their level of experience and understanding?
If they are competent, then the question becomes that of a given individual’s desire to produce CSS to the best of their ability or if they want to cut corners or not be concerned with optimisation.
Working on your own projects this is probably not as big of a deal as if you’re part of a team, and others have to work with your code.
Having said that ‘correctly’ and ‘responsibly’ are pretty subjective. The flexibility of CSS makes it so that you can achieve the same result in multiple ways and it might not necessarily be clear which is the ‘best’. In that case it becomes about agreeing on a convention that makes the most sense for your team/project.
I always find everyone has their own style and idiosyncrasies with CSS.
Even if it does, this is why i listen other examples like mobile dev styling, like flutter, react native, they don't use css. Sorry but i am not wrong on this. Research this, not everything is styled with CSS.
Hey, there's an animation library you should check out. It's called WankerJS. It's really just a one line method for removing the "wanker" class from any Dom elements that are class "Wanker". As we all know, the "Wanker" class adds an opaque overlay on all it's child elements, which is obnoxious if you're styling with css or scss. Enjoy!
Don't be so opinionated. You learned css past year. Did you really JUST learn media queries???
dev.to/urielbitton/the-top-5-css-t...
I have known css for 8 years or more. These are only concepts i took seriously last year. You can know basic css and use css libraries for web development, or use older css methods...
Also be respectful please. Your comment is not appropriate on DEV, be more respectful when writing comments in the future.
So you only learned it starting last year. Gotcha.
If you actually read the post you would know i learned you can use max-HEIGHT and not just max-width which i knew from many years ago...
I respect CSS!
Alert: It's a warzone out there...
Whatever, but I love CSS
I people are nitpicky about the word programming, cause CSS is definitely a language and a very important one.
HTML and CSS may be better characterized as Markup Language like Markdown (Languages that "markup" or describe/manipulate content)
Kinda like Pug, EJS, Mustache can be called Templating Languages
Or TOML, YAML are also MarkUp Languages that are used more for configuration files.
They have a syntax, they communicate things, they are a language.
I think people are just sensitive about the word programming.
At the end of the day, it's fairly meaningless. All these things are important technologies that take time to master and effective use of them is important.
And... comments proceed to do exactly that 🤣
In seriousness, what do you mean by "respect"? Follow good conventions and code patterns?
In my book you can be god of programming but if you don't know how to CSS I will never acknowledge you as a legit frontend/fullstack web developer.
Well... It's not a programming language as it's not Turing complete, so it cannot be respected in this regard in any way.
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