[williamdclt]

Because it was "the whole point" doesn't mean that it was a "good idea", especially when the web changed so much since then.

It's not necessarily a good idea to completely separate what things are and how things look. It indeed makes easier to do a complete redesign, but how often does it happen? And if it does happens, what are the chances that it actually won't require markup changes?

I find the approach by Bootstrap (or better, Tailwind) much easier to work with: compose utility classes to make up higher-level components. It still require some encapsulation of these higher-order components (with a Web Component, React Component or even just a class with @apply), but it allows much much faster development, less spaghetti styling, less cross-browser concerns and less code all around. Ultimately I code faster with less bugs and easier maintainance: I take it as a subjectively better approach.

[uk_programmer]

> It's not necessarily a good idea to completely separate what things are and how things look. It indeed makes easier to do a complete redesign, but how often does it happen? And if it does happens, what are the chances that it actually won't require markup changes?

If the markup is done properly in the first place. It is incredibly easy to restyle and you typically don't to rework much markup. It just ends up working.

> but it allows much much faster development, less spaghetti styling, less cross-browser concerns and less code all around.

I have seen no evidence of this in practice. This is only true if you design is basically a skin of these frameworks. If you have anything remotely custom you end up overriding so much you might have well just started with a normalise/reset style-sheet. So for some internal application that never seen on the outside, you can use bootstrap and slap something together quick sure. However if you are actually building something with a unique it just doesn't really work.

If you think about what you are doing instead of just jumping in and coding. You can break stuff down properly without the need for hundreds of classes that typically come with these CSS frameworks. You do end up with clean CSS and the markup is clean and you do have less code.

By doing things properly i.e. you markup and css is correct. You have less cross browser bugs. I end up in my current being asked by a coworker to pick up IE bugs (yes we still support IE9 upwards). Only 10% of the fixes are actually problems with IE. 90% of the problems are correcting the markup (making it valid) and cleaning up the CSS and it just works cross browser. Sure you will have to work around things like you don't have flexbox and other niceties and you have to use an alternative style-sheet. But fixing the markup normally gets it from "not rendering properly at all" to "rendering only slightly wrong".

[ratww]

> I have seen no evidence of this in practice. This is only true if you design is basically a skin of these frameworks. If you have anything remotely custom you end up overriding so much you might have well just started with a normalise/reset style-sheet. So for some internal application that never seen on the outside, you can use bootstrap and slap something together quick sure. However if you are actually building something with a unique it just doesn't really work.

I had the opposite experience. I've build a few projects with Tachyons and Tailwind, and I rarely have to create custom CSS. In one of the largest ones (that actually had a 100% custom UI toolkit with over 40 widgets) we only had about 120 lines of custom CSS, pretty much just overriding colors and adding some utility classes for animations, custom drop shadows and some weird hover states.

The reason we need so little extra CSS that is that those frameworks use the same defaults that designers use: everything is a multiplier of 4px/8px, font sizes are proportional, and it follows design principles. Actually, if you work with a designer chances are most of your CSS is already very repetitive, because designers love patterns.

[uk_programmer]

I've heard all this before. I am extremely sceptical and tbh I wouldn't want to build a site this way at all.

It goes against what CSS was supposed to do and generally the results are IMO hard to work with because you have the overhead of having to learn how the framework works rather than just using the fundamental principles of what you are working with. Also the markup is horrendous to read.

With modern CSS you are given so much control. Your style-sheets aren't complicated anyway.

[mellow2020]

I agree. I like CSS, and I don't like anything the frameworks offer, they're just the worst of all possible worlds: a LOT of CSS (it's not just the "custom CSS" that counts, from the perspective of the browser even off-the-shelf Bootstrap is 100% custom), with no aesthetic pleasure to show for it.

But that's for my own projects I work on as a single dev, in a team I might not mind as much. For something corporate, unless it's a corporation I can really get behind, I will not care at all, because I know it'll be thrown away soon. Let's make it bland then, I don't mind. But for my own things, it's not even a consideration.. I don't even start with a reset stylesheet, I start with a blank file, and I enjoy thinking up the overall structure just as much as I enjoy tweaking values here and there, and I still like things I made over 10 years ago. Care for the little things always ends up showing, somehow.