Hot take: most CSS art tutorials hide how much trial and error goes in

I was looking for a new technique to make clouds in pure CSS last week on Codepen. I found this one demo that had this super clean, fluffy cloud made with just five box-shadows and a border-radius trick. Looked amazing. But then I saw the author's revision history and realized they went through 47 different versions before it looked right. 47! That really surprised me because I always thought these artists just knew the math and whipped it out perfect on the first try. Gave me a little more patience for my own sloppy attempts. Has anyone else dug into the version history on someone's popular pen and felt way better about your own messy process?

2 comments

2 Comments

schmidt.blake8d agoMost Upvoted

Wait are you serious, 47 versions? I used to be one of those people who thought CSS wizards just had the numbers memorized. Like they could punch in random pixel values and it would magically arrange into a perfect cloud. Then I tried making a simple crescent moon shape with border-radius and gave up after like 8 tries because I couldn't get the curves right. Seeing that someone with real skill went through 47 attempts makes me feel way less dumb about my own struggle bus sessions. It really changes how I look at those clean pens now. I just see a lot of trial and error hidden behind the final result.

holly_flores798d ago

47 tries is wild. Makes me feel better about my own garbage code.