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You're ignoring GPPs argument though, 'basket', 'product' and 'searchResults' aren't reusable. From the POV of a dev on your team (who knows the framework), I know how to change 'pull-left', 'row', 'col-xs-4' to get the result I want without CSS spelunking.


My answer was implicit is the final comment. The purpose of those elements is not re-use. It's clarity. The re-use happens in the Sass (or other preprecessor) code. Somewhere in your Sass, you define "basket" as a "pull-left; row; col-xs-4" or even higher level constructs which you plan to re-use... that's up to you.

The point is they are orthogonal issues. Creating re-usable chunks of CSS does not suddenly absolve you of the responsibility to make your HTML readable. You can do either one without the other, but you should be doing both.


I agree you can write your Sass like that and 'do both', and I'm all for writing good Sass and building up higher level abstractions for re-use where you can.

However, there's no denying the reusability of classes like 'col-xs-4', despite the knee jerk hatred of that 'non-semantic' class from some in this thread, and I maintain that if all you needed was a col-xs-4 and your team know what col-xs-4 is, then why not just stick it in your HTML.

It doesn't make it less 'readable' for your team, and they're the primary audience.

> You can do either one without the other, but you should be doing both.

I guess I'm disagreeing you should always be doing both. Do both (create a new semantic class-name) where it makes sense. But when you already have a reusable class that does the job, and all of your team will understand, just use it.


To change it, I'll have to go spelunking through either the HTML or the CSS, and if I was a designer, I'd probably pick the CSS. Looking for the 'product' class and tweaking a few properties sounds much nicer than figuring out how I need to change 'col-xs-4'. I'd rather have a conversation with the layout engine than struggle with some middle-man generic CSS framework like Bootstrap - it's simpler and more flexible (imo).


The lower-level abstraction (raw CSS) vs the higher level (bootstrap's grid) is more flexible. It's not simpler though, which is why the abstraction is worth learning. With a grid framework, you can make changes at a common level of abstraction that your teammates will understand. Because I guarantee the way you'd implement the equivalent behaviour in raw CSS is not how I would, and now we have both styles in the codebase (complexity).

Also yet to meet one of these 'designers' that would rather change CSS than HTML. And logically ... you can't understand CSS without understanding HTML, so preferring to make the change in CSS is just an arbitrary decision.




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