Nerd Business

Releasing today v1 beta of masscss. Basically a gigantic (massive, to be precise) CSS file. With thousands of simple to read, declaratively-named classes for use in constructing & theming web layouts.

The library is based on basscss - which claims to be the original functional CSS library ie- before Bootstrap was the cool kid in town (and more recently, Tailwind) - and combines it (and all its' plugins) with hundreds (thousands? I didn't care to count) more classes in that same functional style.

The library and various updates I have already published to npm going back over a year ago so nothing else particularly special about this v1 beta release other than, well - a few more classes - and specifically a searchable/filter on the newly updated website to make finding existing classes a lot more convenient & visual than just CTRL+F'ing the source file. F that source file!

(I will publish its' website's source to my Github at a future date; it uses lit-html for rendering which is another web tek I am really digging lately)

And if you don't find a class? Well, fork the lib and add some more!

While the website lists classes by default in alphabetical order there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to the actual order of classes in the mass.css file... it's a massive mess. So just plant your new classes anywhere. And maybe cleaning that up / creating a build script to automagically generate a sorted, clean & tidy source file can be a v1.1 feature.

Oh - and on that regard - there is no build script! And no Sass in this mass sea of CSS either. Just pure unadulterated Cascading Style Sheets baby.

Have never understood the fascination; the over obsessing of making CSS dynamic - and more complicated - when a functional library such as this makes it so dead simple; CSS does what it needs to do so I'd rather move-on to build stuff and focus programming energy on, I dunno - programming languages!

That said, CSS variables are definitely a thing - probably something again to consider for a future version; 2.0 perhaps. I was also thinking an API to pragmatically return new classes would be neat; ie- mass.randomColor() or mass.mix('blue', 'yellow') or mass.hideBelow(742) and so forth.

In the meantime, enjoy the vanilla experience!

One more thing: if you haven't already grasped the glory that is the CSS flexbox - take this opportunity to try masscss in combination with this guide from the original basscss documentation site (masscss has all the classes indicated in said guide). With just a few of these classes you get all the power of flexbox and after committing them to memory you won't have to look up a guide again to create any kind of layout you want; no fancy components or framework needed.

I'm currently reading quite possibly the coolest programming book ever written. The book is not teaching Python, nor C, and not even Assembly. Rather, the book is teaching Morse code. And electricity. And how these two concepts can be brought together to make anything from telegraphs to modern day computers.

If you're like me and are trying to take your programming skill to the next level, this might be exactly the kind of foundational knowledge you need.

The book is called CODE. I first got wind about it last week, after reading The Book That Every Programmer Should Read on Grigory' blog. Indeed, Grigory recommended every programmer read it - not because of what kind of new techniques you can learn, but rather, because of the broader understanding you will gain from this truly fundamental lesson on how computers work.

Update 2014: The best place to get this video course is from learnpythonthehardway.org. The video course is no longer available from Udemy.

It is the most popular Python programming book in the world. And now, thanks to Udemy - it's on video. So if you're looking to learn Python - should you download the book or watch it on Udemy? Well, you're asking the right guy: I just finished this excellent course. Here is the full review.