Is CSS getting harder to learn? 

Layers, has, and container widths solve like half my problems

I've been writing CSS since 2001. Back in the early days it was possible to know and use just about everything in CSS. Nowadays it's just a bit overwhelming, but things certainly got 1000x easier thanks to flexbox, grid, special units etcetera.

Una gave a perfect to the question if CSS is harder to learn now, I agree 100%. Back then, browser differences were much bigger, and we had to do a lot more hacks to accomplish simple things. Remember when we didn't have box-sizing: border-box, flex, grid, even rounded corners and box-shadow? Remember clearfix? zoom: 1 and _property: value for IE? Now we have a lot more useful features that will most likely work very similar across different browsers and devices. But yeah, we have a lot more features to learn.

why is kevin staring directly into my soul

This insight and advice is invaluable! Thanks to you both.

I took around 1 month to learn css topics like box model, position, display, overflow, flexbox, grid, responsive layouts and a bit of animation. I can create almost anything that i see. It may not be pixel perfect, but still decent enough.

Holy crap, brilliant, excellent, amazing, I love you both, so astonishing! \o/

It's difficult because people underestimate it. It doesn't adhere to "programming languages" and people scoff at it. Like it's supposed to be easy. It's not easy: learning CSS and being good at it means it's a lot of work and effort. "Knowing CSS" doesn't mean you know CSS if you don't know what you can animate, how to animate things, what's cheap and what's expensive and why.

Just like many languages Una is right that you learn a small core set of features and then learn about other features as needed.

As a comparison you should recreate a frontend mentor site with CSS2, or at least the worst part.. table layouts Then recreate with modern CSS capabilities. I think it's a fair way to compare how hard things used to be, to how hard they are now.

Thank you for your help. How to choose or select CSS variable or HTML class or ID in general for beginners.

I am learning CSS I made animal picture to zoom in the face of the animal

Started learning css by learning how to fix stuff, got me pretty far and now i wish every styling is done using css

I love her and kevin❤

I began with CSS in the very bad days of IE dominance. Went through a pleasant period with it in the late 2010s. Now that it's become a new-feature-of-the-month kind of thing, I just find I haven't got the time to keep up with any of it.

Having to learn or create hacks was more of an issue in the past, compared to now looking up supported features to resolve them. A simple example might be vertical centring of content.

Css seems so much easier to me now, but I already know how to clear a float. Can't go back.

Yes

Hey Kevin, I love your videos but I was wondering if you have made or will make any videos about getting work. I have a degree in web dev and I consistently work on projects out of my own time, but I'm currently homeless. I had a job that over worked me and lead to me putting web dev stuff on the back burner. I quit my job to focus on web dev because I was confident I'd get a job with my degree and just working on projects, but my savings had run out and now I'm homeless. I know this might be weird and too personal, but I'm desperate.

I do not think it is harder per sey, but people do have to look for more modern ways to do what they want. Centering a Div still comes up with the pre-2010 stuff still all the time for example.

The hardest thing about css for me is we're overly dependant on frameworks/libraries that we don't write css anymore. I only use classes these days and only touch css about once a month

"Maturity" to me means you can do what you need to do in a simple and intuitive way. I don't think CSS is quite there yet.. F.ex: there is a property called vertical-align. Why can't we repurpose this into something that actually works as you'd expect? Instead they come up with "flex" that has align-items and justify-items, which one of these are vertical?

I love how the video starts discussing a text layout and completely ignores the usage of start/end for float, and margin-inline which is crucial for RTL

As someone who is writing CSS since version 2 got released, I am relieved that I must not start with CSS nowadays. CSS became massive and there is so much overlapping functionality that it has become difficult to define what is the "right way" to do things. In the early days we were always excited by new functionality and we squeezed CSS out to the last drop with hacks and tricks (remember trying to realize a multi-column layout with an equal column height in IE 4.x or 5.x?). The abundance of features is now the opposite problem than what we had 25 years ago - it is hard to master in a clean and structured way. We oldtimers have now nearly everything what we always wanted - therefore I can't complain - but CSS is still not easy and in some aspects it became harder to learn (due to its complexity).

Pretty obviously the more things there are in a given thing to learn, the "harder" it is to learn. I put "harder" in quotes because it's subjective to the person. Physics was a lot "easier" to learn in, say, the eighteenth century compared to being "harder" later when relativity and quantum mechanics came on the scene. Math, on the other hand, stays largely consistent unless you get into some really abstract stuff. So saying "CSS isn't harder, just different" is like saying physics isn't harder, it's just different. Well, of course, it's different! It's expanded and evolved. But, undeniably, there is more to it. But, as is stated with the CSS context, you don't have to use all of it -- or even most of it. You see many areas now saying "How to do X without JavaScript." And, in some ways, CSS is becoming a language that can do various calculations and do a lot of behind the scenes stuff. In that case, you can say it's "harder" in the sense that here's more things to learn, more interactions to learn about, more opacity around solutions that seem different but are really the same thing, more things that could go wrong, a larger regression surface to consider, etc. Undeniably there are also more tools to help you navigate some of those aspects. So I think it's more about possible cognitive friction rather than a simple "easier / harder" distinction.

I searched why i can't learn css and this video popped up 😂

It's not difficult. People should not skip steps in the learning curve it takes time to start confidently knowing css, but you can certainly do a lot with just a few concepts of it ... focus on the essentials no body uses all css properties you'll get introduced to more complex topics on your journey when it's time just like every programming language, and most importantly follow Kevin he is a great teacher I learned most of the css I know from his channel. Subscribe you'll not regret it

Beautiful 😍

Great! Now get Lea Verou as well and you can die happy. 🎉

are you related to devin, kevin?

To me It is not about learning CSS that is hard, it is nearly impossible to make sense of in my opinion. This feeling grows the more I get to know CSS. With every passing day I dislike CSS a bit more. I'll just have to deal with it. I believe I am the only one carrying this opinion.

It’s getting harder because the spec is getting bigger. More reason to need specialized role

it's always been hard. everything was so much harder back when we had to stick to pre-flexbox css features. css has more complexity in order to address modern web app design patterns. both it and the DOM were built around static documents, not interactive apps. I will die on the hill that given the absurd ambition of what css aims to accomplish, it's a stunningly elegant and beautiful language. definitely less of an embarrassment than javascript given that they had to evolve under nearly-identical historical circumstances

I think because of all the new features it is sooo much easier. You literally couldn't center things in an intuitive way and now you can. CSS is sooo much better, intuitive and easier than ever IMO. Folks that think it's complicated just haven't taken the time to learn or just don't care about UI or UX.

Pixel Perfect is painful

personally i dont think, its getting harder to learn, (especially if you watch this channel, lol)... css is challenging in a good way, but not hard... i think the reason so many people these days find it harder to learn is cos they rely too much on css frameworks.... i got nothing against bootstrap or other css frameworks but theres nothing a frameworkc an do that I cant if i soend the time to learn the underlying code... css isnt perfect but its a lot of fun learning by trial and error, its not like a programming language where you gotta memorise a lot of stuff, with css as long as you get comfortable with its syntax many things bcome instinct cos it live rent free in your head

Harder? Grid, containers, variables, :is, :has, logical properties, simple media queries, CSS now is so much easier than it use to be. The only thing harder about it is that you have tons of ways to accomplish the same results.

CSS has grown in to an un-tameable monster. There's too much choice Flex Box or Grid? In my opinion only one out of the two needs to exist. People often forget the basics such as positioning and dive head first in to animations and hover effects at least in my working experience. I tend to stick with the fundamentals that are rock solid. Less is more.

CSS not getting harder. Designers making web programs job harder

I can genuinely tell you, css is actually really challenging to learn. The problems I find with css are: - the API surface is huge - the properties are always available instead of belonging to a "primitive", for example, in javascript the ".map" method is part of array [] - properties and values easily have unintended impacts based on their order That is especially painful when you are starting and even later on if you aren't the type of person who is trying to be holistic, and take the "point" from Una and Kevin when they say "you don't need to learn everything". The truth is, you'll eventually have to lol. I am not trying to bash on css here, but honestly, css' growth and the new web demands/requirements made it the frankenstein it is, it is far from something which was designed with the intent to being approachable, with a learning curve that is manageable, or even with a starting point for a good pedagogically learning experience. I understand that the purpose is for it to be a tool for professionals to use in their day to day work, but maybe we should consider approachability like we consider accessibility. If it's not particularly clear just reply to the comment and I will try to clarify, thanks.

When Una was talking you looked so creepy. Just staring straight into the camera, right into the infinite depth of a viewer's soul

CSS is very easy :P

It's not getting harder its more people over complicate everything.

CSS is not a language. It is a syntax. It is a set of conditions: If this then that.

Kill safari and Firefox and all language will be ease to learn

I'd rather learn c++ Rather than css