alt Hacker NewsWe don't need to learn CSS anymore. Just like we don't need to learn ASM since GCC does a great job generating it from higher-level code.
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Define "we".
The people who make the tools that generate your assembly instructions need to learn it. Just like the people who make the browser rendering engine and push CSS forward still need to learn it.
The people who don't need to learn asm never needed to learn it. If you wouldn't code in asm now, you wouldn't have ever.
This " logic" is so irrational.
I just want to point out the exception - the person who the AI learns from.
Someone has to know it. And to advance it to the next level requires domain level expertise. Or are we allowing LLM's to determine the next CSS snapshot/version/level/whatever?
Learning ASM will actually teach you a lot about how the computer works, and I doubt learning CSS deeply teaches you much about design fundamentals.
I want to believe this is sarcasm, but it's so hard to tell these days.
Honestly, we don't really need to learn any more. These days, I mostly copy and paste from tickets to the LLM, and then rubber stamp the output. I have people in my team that try to care about what they're making, but they're generating less code, and filling tickets more slowly, than I am. Even when it comes to system design and architecture, the LLMs aren't great at it, but honestly, they're better than my coworkers (I'd say system architecture is probably at the same readiness level that coding was last year). Expertise wouldn't really help you get things done faster.
You could probably replace me with a minimum wage worker to do some manual testing and copy-paste errors from the console into the LLM, and still be fine.
Let's see how long it is before the next round of layoffs, I guess. For now, the money's fine and the work's boring but ok.
But, no, the LLMs rewarding expertise line is pure cope. Software is not really skilled labor any more.
(obviously, throwaway -- I'm not interested in potentially advertising this to my employer)
I am a frontend engineer and I see so many bugs from vibe-coded CSS from people who think just like you. CSS is very powerful and easy to get wrong if you don't understand it. Since most CSS code on the internet is not good, LLMs do not generate good CSS code and create a lot of bugs ranging from bad performance to completely broken reflow.