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Discussion on: Case against premade CSS frameworks (and Design systems)

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vlasterx profile image
Vladimir Jovanović • Edited

I agree and I have to add something - it is my mistake that I haven't explained it thoroughly, but would it made any difference considering how difficult is to reconcile designers and developers?

For some reason, most people here assumed that new design system and unique frameworks that support it are something bad that goes against all good principles of design, UX and development. This is typical dev perspective of looking at things and resistance to change.

How did you react first time you saw Bootstrap or Material?

Did you like it?

If you did, would you like to repeat that experience with something new? If it is so, then why so much resistance and negativity?

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gary_woodfine profile image
Gary Woodfine

I don't think there is resistance to change. That is just not the developer mindset, developers are all about change, they're used to dealing with it, but they are also pragmatic about change.

I do get where you're coming from, in regards to innovation. But we also need to counter with we shouldn't just innovate for the sake of innovation, we have to focus innovating for the need.

If a new CSS is framework is only due to that it may aesthetically look pleasing and not actually provide anything more, then I would argue what is the point ?

I love the supposedly Henry Ford quote :

"If I asked the customers what they wanted, they would've asked for faster horses"

So the innovation here was to think out of the box. There is a world of difference between faster horses and motor vehicles.

is there really a need for new CSS framework ? or is there an opportunity to completely re-think or re-imagine the UI ?

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vlasterx profile image
Vladimir Jovanović • Edited

Framework is technical representation of a design system. When we re-imagine design systems and how UI works, then we need to create new modular framework that will support it. Since CSS has advanced quite a bit, especially with CSS Grid, creation of unique frameworks for each new project is no longer an issue. Instead of focusing on learning how frameworks work, why not learn modern CSS?

There is a lot of overhead in code when you just re-style existing frameworks. It affects performance and code base becomes dirty and unreadable after some point.