As CSS gets bigger and more needlessly complex, I wonder if people start writing compile-to-CSS languages that aren't just supersets of the status quo.
I could imagine (and I think I am possibly observing) CSS going a similar direction to JavaScript; we might soon see the CoffeeScript of CSS, and then eventually something more sophisticated and well-designed like the Elm of CSS.
CSS — like JavaScript — might become the styling bytecode of the web.
Is it really "needlessly" complex if this is enabling styling that wasn't possible before?
Re your second point that CSS might become a compilation target for styling... have you never heard of Sass, Less, Tailwind, or any of a million UI frameworks that provide alternative ways to write CSS, or even avoid writing it directly altogether? This isn't exactly new.
> Is it really "needlessly" complex if this is enabling styling that wasn't possible before?
Many newer features that have been added over the years don't actually enable anything new. Not that I'm arguing in favour of table-based layouts either.
> have you never heard of Sass, Less, Tailwind, or any of a million UI frameworks that provide alternative ways to write CSS, or even avoid writing it directly altogether? This isn't exactly new.
I have written CSS in a serious capacity for several years. I am more than familiar with Sass, Less, etc., which is exactly why I wrote "languages that aren't just supersets of the status quo".
How do you propose we get to such a language that is more than a superset of the status quo if CSS, the compilation target itself, is severely limited?
I'm guessing you aren't writing binary in your day to day work, are you? I'm fairly certain whichever language you're working with is more featureful and ergonomic than working directly in binary.
Similarly, Elm has a different surface area from JavaScript, and yet JavaScript is the compilation target.
CSS doesn't need to be featureful to be a compilation target.
I could imagine (and I think I am possibly observing) CSS going a similar direction to JavaScript; we might soon see the CoffeeScript of CSS, and then eventually something more sophisticated and well-designed like the Elm of CSS.
CSS — like JavaScript — might become the styling bytecode of the web.