Some of this sounds like it really complicates the layout code, but I'm not sure I'm reading it right. Take, for example, a standard dialog template. If I have a large number of dialogs for editing user/products/whatever, all with the same basic `<div><label><span><input>` layout, it sounds like he's saying that I can't rely on the dialog template to format my labels, I have to apply the `dialog-label` class to every label in every dialog. Almost every tag in my doc will have a class attribute, since I can never rely on selectors to apply the right styling. In general, selectors are almost never used and classes do all the work.
Am I reading this right? Or are templates an exception? I need to re-read the template/component thing a few times to figure out exactly what nomenclature he's using here. But in general, I'm not sure I see the advantage of `.modal__form__item` vs. `.modal .form .item` except that the first is exponentially more verbose in the html.
You work as a development project manager, don't you?
It takes a certain kind of unique mindset to encounter excellent work somebody has done and use it as an opportunity to bash them because unrelated teams with unrelated skillsets are not churning out the features you want at the rate you want them. How in the world is doing his job the best he can do it somehow not the best use of his time?
What exactly is your argument here? Is it that appfolio should not hire such excellent front end developers because their backend is still lacking? Or is it that the front end developers should do worse work to mesh better with what you consider to be the failings of the back end? Even if the css author had anything to do with your complaints, your argument betrays the absolute worst mindset that one can find in software management: the idea that quality work is time-consuming rather than time-saving.
> So I would venture that, for any pair of moderately experienced developers, it's almost always possible to find a pair of tasks such that one of them is twice (or even ten times) as fast as the other.
I completely disagree. The FizzBuzz syndrome is very real: when I do developer screenings, the majority of candidates simply can't program even tiny problems. There's no way they're faster than anybody on my team at any development-related task. And yet, they all have long resumes and a lot of experience. All those people are working someplace. And I've watched these 1/10 developers at work: they copy/paste lots of code, program through trial and error, and spend most of their time in the debugger. Eventually, stuff gets done, but excruciatingly slowly.
Once you reach a certain level of competence, then I think what you're saying is true. But there's a huge number of developers who don't reach that level.
On the other hand, I agree with you about this article. Some sort of insight on where this dev spent his time might have been interesting. Whenever I read things this vague, articles based on vague impressions rather than any hard metrics, I'm left wondering which side was actually incompetent here. Maybe this was one of the 1/10 CTOs, completely incapable of effectively communicating with people who don't fit his favored personality type. And if the feature the dev was working on was replaced with something else that only took 30 minutes to implement, maybe the original design was simply unworkable.
You're looking at the wrong side of the meeting. It's the time before the meeting, not the time after.
I like morning stand-ups, but a big problem is that if the stand-up is at 9, I start winding down whatever I'm doing around 8:30, and I don't start new tasks after 8-8:30. Multiply the loss by the entire team every day and that's potentially a big loss of time. And because everyone's schedule is different, there's really no place to put the meeting that avoids the problem.
The benefits of a well-run standup can outweight this productivity cost, but it's a real cost that needs to be considered.
Families who won the lottery reverted to the mean in a generation or two
A small event known in the US as the Civil War, which completely decimated the economy of Georgia, just might have had something to do with this.