Guys we need to talk. Are you capsbold serious? These are things that you learn in a first week of doing web development tutorials. I read this thread and it makes me think that I'm delusional because of a heat wave. Margins collapse? :focus exists? Me not getting a joke? I don't understand.
I think you may be underestimating the fact that many people have been writing CSS for well over a decade now, and that it has evolved considerably since they first read a web development tutorial. If you've not been paying close attention (or not been able to), there are many things that will have passed you by.
It's a blessing to learn css fresh today, in as much as it's a curse to still have practices from ten years ago still lodged in your memory.
GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all, and are old (over two decades), simple, and common enough to be considered basic knowledge. I had the same reaction to those and one or two others.
Now if this was someone relatively new to CSS I'd understand, but the opening paragraph establishes how long this person was around. Padding-vs-margin in particular was necessary knowledge to do good layouts back in those earlier days (less so now only due to flex and grid, which aren't on here).
> GP is pointing out the parts that haven't changed at all
Doesn't read that way to me:
> These are things that you learn in a first week of doing web development tutorials.
Sure, padding vs margin isn't exactly new, however `display: inline-block`, ::before and ::after, rem, ch, and :nth-child() certainly weren't in the old html4/xhtml and css2 guidebook that got me into web development!
To add, I think another post by the same poster on this HN post proves the point that they're not dismissing individual parts, but rather disputing (or sorry but trolling) the article as a whole:
> I think (hope, really) that gp is just one heavy "/s". The knowledge presented in the article is so basic that it is hard to believe that a person who does html for two years and six figures doesn't know these. As for the article, I fail to see any reason for it to exist beyond cheap media presence. Or maybe I should start a blog, because I'm not even halfway too.
I think you are point on. The two existing sibling comments have contradictory excuses for this:
1. New developers might know this, but standards change fast, and it’s hard to keep up.
2. You can’t expect people new to the craft to know everything in the field.
I personally found this article sub-basic. You could probably learn more and better on MDN. I think CSS might be one of few areas on HN where a sub-par article doesn’t get the constructive scrutiny it deserves in the top comments.
It's also good to remember that new devs make up something like 50% of the developer population each year (I forget the exact number, maybe it's every 2 years). So while this may be basic information to someone who's been doing this for at least a few years (and I'd argue it isn't, particularly since the site isn't aimed at Front End Devs, per se, but others who have to do front end development), it is valuable information for the target audience.
> These are things that you learn in a first week of doing web development tutorials.
You meant CSS tutorials? Never read about "margins collapse" in web development tutorials.
Web development tutorials I read (like 10 years ago) were usually about having a web server renders some data queried from a database into some basic HTML. And adding a form to create/edit rows in the database. Then perhaps adding some basic style like colors and paddings and some jQuery to validate the form. Finally moving that page from localhost to internet.
Let's be honest, web development covers a very large area of knowledge and CSS is not the most interesting part (not saying CSS is not interesting!). I guess most people just skip the CSS documentation and learn it by inspecting other pages and copying rules, and searching "how to do X in CSS" and reading tutorials about their specific question.
