Bad CSS in JS

I tried to understand the argument made for styled components vs. ‘traditional’ CSS. But when reviewing these arguments I found out that they typically use bad code as proof for their point.

See e.g. the following SCSS code:

$blue = #5DBCD2;

@mixin button-styles($bg-color, $color) {
  background: $bg-color;
  color: $color;
  border: none;
  border-radius: 0.20em;
  &:hover{
      background: darken($bg-color, 6%);
      cursor: pointer;
  }
}

.button {
  @include button-styles(#ddd, black)
}

.button--primary {
  @include button-styles($blue, white)
}

To pair with a simple component along the lines of:

const Buttons = props => (
  
    Default
    Primary
  
)
export default Buttons

The suggested alternative is:

import themeVars from "myTheme"
import styled from "styled-components"
import { darken } from "polished"

const B...

“If something is too complex to understand, it must be wrong”

While looking for the source of another quote (something along the lines of “If it takes you too long, you're probably doing it wrong”, which I recall having picked up in the Rails community (if you recognize it, please let me know)) I found the following bold statement. We're not talking science here, we're talking software development (actually this guy is talking Java Spring development):

> “If something is too complex to understand, it must be wrong”

from Arjen Poutsma

Some background on this quote can be found on this Xebia website.

Yep, I'm working on a project that seems to have grown way too complex for what it actually should have been.

Happy coding ;)

Why I stopped using OpenOffice.org

As promised. There was a time when I was a true OpenOffice.org fanatic. I even helped actively promoting it by redesigning the homepage . Although I'm still a fan of opensource and open document
storage which ideally should lead to a world in which anyone can use
open software and exchange documents freely without any barriers. Still, I'm no longer typing this in opensource software. I'm typing this in Google -how evil- Docs (update may 2017: Google Docs has been replaced by Apple's notes and iAWriter / Notational Velocity, the latter being markdown based).

It's not that I'm a big fan of Google Docs, but it makes a difference that OpenOffice.org, and other Office systems for that matter, aren't able to make. Not stand alone, nor in a usable way in combination with a proper operating system:

• Relieving me from worrying about storage
• Boot insanely fast (…