Rant: I was that guy who thought 'just make it work' was good enough for 3 years

Last month I was redoing a site for a local coffee shop in Austin and kept fighting with a flexbox layout. My buddy who's been coding for 8 years looked over my shoulder and said 'you know there's a spec for that, right?' Then he showed me the MDN docs for align-content vs align-items. I'd been guessing based on what looked right since I started learning coding 3 years ago. Never once looked up the actual behavior. Felt like an idiot but also makes me wonder what else I'm just winging. Has anyone else had that moment where you realize you've been doing something the hard way forever?

3 comments

3 Comments

terry_hayes1826d ago

@jamesblack been there. We all cowboy code till someone shows us the docs.

jamesblack29d ago

Man, I had a buddy who was building forms with divs and JavaScript for like two years before someone showed him HTML forms actually exist. He was just reinventing the wheel every time.

keith_henderson26d ago

3 years of winging it is rough... my buddy did the same thing with CSS Grid for like 18 months until I showed him the docs.