[afarrell]

When you feel a lack of confidence or speed with of a tool you use frequently, it is easy to feel a mixture of frustration and shame.

That suffering might be due to an unmet desire: that you should get fluency but not require training. As a programmer, you might feel that human repetition is a sign that something needs to be built to prevent that repetition. But, if you talk to a teacher, sports coach, martial artist, or anyone else who works in the domain of training meat-based deep neural nets to solve problems quickly and confidently, you'll find this is false. If you are seeking a feeling of speed and confidence, embrace repetition.

Perhaps, play https://flexboxfroggy.com/ 10 times.

[Dylan16807]

There are lots of things people can do after being shown once. They'll go a at a measured pace, but need minor or zero help. Sports and marital art practice are all about getting sub-second decisions and extremely quick/smooth movements; none of that's relevant to writing something without feeling like a fool.

Maybe a tool like this necessarily needs a bunch of practice. Or maybe it's badly designed, and the experience should be more like chopping a carrot.

[afarrell]

> Sports and marital art practice are all about getting sub-second decisions and extremely quick/smooth movements; none of that's relevant to writing something without feeling like a fool.

Some people expect their brain to answer a question like "I want to make this particular box's children evenly vertically-spaced. What is the name of the css property to google?" with a confident sub-second response. Some people, upon observing that they can't, feel like a fool.

For those people, it is relevant.

--------

> Maybe a tool like this necessarily needs a bunch of practice. Or maybe it's badly designed, and the experience should be more like chopping a carrot.

I'd like to live in a world where every tool thats the best for a job is well-designed.

I'd also like to live in a world every message I try to communicate is one that people pay attention to and understand in the spirit I intended, even if I never edit it.

I'd also like to live in a world where my lumbar region is pain-free, even if I don't regularly do squats.

---------

The author's words about his pain points are still valuable. Systems should be improved. They can't be improved unless problems are made clear. There is much broken in the world and many of us have taken up the call to fix it and we should heed the words of others' frustration.

But there is much broken in the world that won't get fixed anytime soon.

[loosetypes]

Big fan of flexbogfroggy (and cssgridgarden)!

I've been trying to improve my css lately and have found Kevin Powell's content on YouTube great[0].

Eventually I caved and purchased his course[1]. It was initially just to support him, as he has so much premium, free content out there that had benefitted me, but I'm actually going through it and (at least for me) learning faster than by just passively watching youtube videos.

I'm finding it pretty well structured and a good progression from flexbogfroggy.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/KepowOb [1] https://www.kevinpowell.co/courses/

[JamesSwift]

Thats a false equivalence though.

Tools in development are written _by_ people _for_ people. They are crafted to be the way they are, and once you hit a certain level of abstraction above the performance layers I think its assumed that the tool should be easy to use.

[afarrell]

yes, tools 'should' be easy to use.

When you're designing tools, this is relevant.

When you're using tools that have been agreed-upon by committee, it is not.