CSS-Tricks in Limbo

(vale.rocks)

123 points | by edent 6 hours ago

16 comments

  • account42 1 hour ago
    Complaining that they give money to people you don't like is not a good look when you want them to give money to people you do like.
    • boredpudding 42 minutes ago
      Because being friendly works doesn't work. Open source maintainers have been screaming about funding for years. One dude comes along, adds some scripts on top of all the work of those maintainers, and gets millions in funding?

      You can't expect people to be nice then. It's completely messed up.

      • oefrha 37 minutes ago
        In this case CSS-Tricks got paid $4m first, so probably the wrong entity to be complaining about funding. But maybe the lead editor in question who’s not the creator didn’t see much of that?
        • boredpudding 34 minutes ago
          CSS-Tricks didn't get paid $4m. They got acquired. The previous owner of CSS-Tricks got $4m.
          • oefrha 22 minutes ago
            Got acquired => got paid. CSS-Tricks the entity (up to the point of acquisition) got paid the money. If and how the money was divided between the people involved doesn’t seem be public info.
    • mb_thd 31 minutes ago
      "people you do like" in this case refers to a website that DigitalOcean owns. "people you don't like" is a singular (racist) guy who slapped a bunch of scripts on top of Arch and somehow receives hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.
    • prinny_ 1 hour ago
      I think it’s a very good look when the people you complain about are racists.
      • IslandRebel 41 minutes ago
        I personally find it tiresome. This happens every few years where someone creates a project or does something that becomes popular and then someone starts combing through everything they've said to find something objectionable.

        Someone went back like 10 plus odd years on an old Jeff Geerling's blog and found that he had at the time (not sure what his position is now and don't care) some mild anti-abortion views and was called a fascist. Loius Rossman made an offhand remark about transexuals and he gets called a fascist.

        It is quite obvious for some it has become nothing other than witch hunt.

        • boredpudding 35 minutes ago
          There's a difference between when people have a platform. Made a mistake 10 years ago? Fine.

          But that's very different than using your huge platform today to spread your hate.

          Pretending those two are the same is dangerous. One of them does actual harm today.

          • IslandRebel 25 minutes ago
            > There's a difference between when people have a platform. Made a mistake 10 years ago? Fine.

            I am sorry but that isn't the case. There will be people bringing this stuff up constantly for years to come. This happens all the time. Someone will dig through some old forums/news group/twitter posts that someone made and use that as a stick to beat them with.

            I care about people committing serious crimes, not that they've expressed an opinion I disagree with.

            > But that's very different than using your huge platform today to spread your hate.

            I severely doubt he has any ability to enact any serious political change in the UK. You would have to prove to me he can change elections and/or enact policy.

            > Pretending those two are the same is dangerous. One of them does actual harm today.

            Making discussion impossible by calling everyone a fascist/racist/nazi or whatever that has political views you disagree with is dangerous. Anti-immigration sentiment is rising in the UK because there has been quite a number of high profile incidents where women and/or children have been harmed or killed. One of these incidents my own mother was involved in (I can't give more details than that).

            I am pretty much bang on in the centre politically and if I try to even steelman the opposing sides arguments (on both the left and the right) I will have people berating me.

        • polymer8563 25 minutes ago
          totally the same thing guys! comparison is my passion!
      • 740273730191 25 minutes ago
        [flagged]
    • blactuary 57 minutes ago
      "People you don't like" is a great euphemism for racists
  • rkeswick 1 hour ago
    The writing quality definitely dropped after the acquisition. It's a shame, CSS-Tricks taught me so much early on.
    • kreetx 49 minutes ago
      > David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH). Previously of Ruby on Rails fame, but now of Omarchy notoriety and far-right, racist infamy.

      The quality of writing isn't great here either.

  • wg0 42 minutes ago
    I am concerned that what will happen to detailed technical write ups that defined much of the "technical internet space"? There used to be "CodeProject" (still is around probably) that used to have great articles on C, Windows Programming, Windows System programming and what not. Similar other sources on Web as well such as some TutPlus network.

    Now with LLMs, they won't gain attention and all knowledge would be stuck in LLMs but there would be no knowledge base to train the LLMs on so... would this all collapse in a decade or two?

    PS: Not anti AI rant, just a genuine open question.

  • ewy1 1 hour ago
    the title is really underselling it; as the post is very concise, i won't repeat it here but it's worth reading
  • wiesson 24 minutes ago
    Can’t the site be migrated to Astro/static and be hosted on CF/Vercel? It could be a great resource for LLMs
  • est 57 minutes ago
    Perhaps just make it open source and static host it
  • owebmaster 2 hours ago
    That's what going to happen to tailwind too after the acquisition.
    • EspadaV9 2 hours ago
      Has Shopify given money to Omarchy too? Or more so because now Tailwind is owned by someone larger?
    • threetonesun 1 hour ago
      Tailwind is basically already EOL in its functional inability to support newer CSS features. Both of these projects seemed like the creator being fine with getting out with a nice paycheck, and that's ok by me, although it's unfortunate DO lied about how it would handle CSS Tricks going forward, and generally abandoned the tech writing aspect it was initially known for.
  • Theodores 1 hour ago
    Almost all magazines go though an arc of success, plateau and decline. Audiences and writers move on or retire.

    I very much like and use CSS-Tricks, however, in itself it reflects a somewhat dated frontend design process and rarely uses any CSS tricks to clothe the Wordpress core that enforces dated design processes.

  • micromacrofoot 1 hour ago
    what are people using instead of digital ocean now?
    • rpastuszak 39 minutes ago
      Hetzner + Coolify + BunnyCDN for the entire stack

      I'm moving off Vercel / AWS. I kept DO for a Minecraft server for friends/family but that's dead.

    • recov 1 hour ago
      I switched over to vultr months ago, so far so good!
    • spiderfarmer 1 hour ago
      Hetzner. I like the company and how they operate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQeJYEN_lrg

      Plus, it's an EU company. I don't want to rely on US hosting for my business.

    • jordanscales 1 hour ago
      Hetzner
  • jgalt212 1 hour ago
    few people ever miss an opportunity to kick DHH.

    > A set of scripts and configurations which are led by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH). Previously of Ruby on Rails fame, but now of Omarchy notoriety and far-right, racist infamy.

  • draw_down 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • TechDebtDevin 26 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • TechDebtDevin 40 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • thrownaway561 1 hour ago
    Let's call it what it is, someone crying because their project isn't getting the love it wants while someone new did. Welcome to life. This happens all the time in business. CSS-Tricks is old, it had it's time and now it's time to move on. DO can do whatever they want. If they want to focus on getting Omarchy popular, then so be it.

    And dude, what is with all the DHH hate??? The dude isn't a Nazi, fascist or racist. The dude sees the country he loves turning into a cesspool and wrote about it. We're seeing the same thing here in the US with all these immigrants taking over Michigan.

    • blactuary 55 minutes ago
      "He's not racist!"

      (says something racist)

    • IslandRebel 56 minutes ago
      > Let's call it what it is, someone crying because their project isn't getting the love it wants while someone new did. Welcome to life. This happens all the time in business. CSS-Tricks is old, it had it's time and now it's time to move on. DO can do whatever they want. If they want to focus on getting Omarchy popular, then so be it.

      CSS Tricks was a massively useful resource. However tailwind and/or other frontend frameworks have abstracted a lot of this away and tbh I've haven't even bothered looking at the site in several years.

      > And dude, what is with all the DHH hate??? The dude isn't a Nazi, fascist or racist. The dude sees the country he loves turning into a cesspool and wrote about it. We're seeing the same thing here in the US with all these immigrants taking over Michigan.

      Unfortunately political polarisation is affecting everyone and everything.

      The topic is an almost obligatory mention any time Omarchy gets mentioned. I've seen stuff like this webpage https://stopomarchy.neocities.org/ where they are claiming Jeff Geerling to be a fascist, which is obviously ridiculous.

      I don't believe DHH to be a fascist or whatever (yes I read the blog post, it is standard reactionary politics that been around for about a decade now). I am not sure why feel the need to constantly mention it, I understand he may have some views that people disagree with, but he cannot realistically affect any change. The obligatory mention feels performative IMO.

      Moreover, I deeply disagree with the politics of many prominent people (of all political persuasions) that are often front and centre in tech, you won't hear me mentioning it unless it is relevant to their work or they are in a position to actually affect change.

    • chunkyslink 33 minutes ago
      They guy writes things like this https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64.

      Let me say that the generalisations made in here about a far right minority march as if it is 'all brits' is brazen, but not naive.

      He want's you to think all Brits think like this, in order to push his racist agenda. Let me tell you his mate Tommy Robinson is despised by many.

      Don't fall for it. Divide and conquer. As old as British Imperialism.

  • sintaxi 57 minutes ago
    Wow, Omarchy is hot right now. Great to see all these companies contributing to a future with Linux on desktop. Good on Digital Ocean for making such a substantial commitment.

    It would be a shame if css-tricks went offline after all these years. I can understand it winding down now that we are in the age of agents but I hope to see it preserved in some way so it stays online for a very long time.

    • otherme123 18 minutes ago
      Omarchy is a highly opinionated distro. For example I remember DHH falling in love with alacritty a few minutes after switching from being a Mac hardcore user-evangelist (Mac users were furious in Twitter!). Now alacritty is in Omarchy as one of the four terminals available.

      This is to say that Omarchy is not Linux. Is a very particular vision of Linux that lots of people won't like. Funding should go to projects near the foundation of Linux (say Gnome or Kde or alacritty itself), not to some random re-packager known for having strong and radical takes that might swing without previous notice. DHH is perfectly able to wake up tomorrow saying "fuck Linux, fuck Omarchy, the future is Windows".

    • lgl 31 minutes ago
      > Great to see all these companies contributing to a future with Linux on desktop.

      I'm thinking they're merely riding the free publicity wave. Who, in their right mind, would contribute to the super narrow definition of linux desktop preached by DHH?

      Was "being agentic" and "being keyboard shortcut oriented" the big gaps preventing the adoption of linux on desktop?

      I honestly fail to see why everybody is so convinced that the linux desktop will be "saved" by Omarchy, a set of scripts specifically designed to mostly satisfy a narrow slice of power users and developers.

      Also, sponsoring a multi-millionaire's AI generated side project to the sum of many millions of dollars instead of contributing to the dozens or hundreds of thankless developers that have built and maintained most of the current linux ecosystem is pretty disgusting imho.