Before taking my current position at TechTracker, I said that CSS development was easier than PHP programming. CSS development is my task for TechTracker, although JavaScript and PHP work happens here or there. My first few Botsko.net projects for 2006 have been more programming-based than the design-based projects I was working on in Fall 2005. It’s become clear that programming is much easier than CSS.

Programming is like a puzzle. You need to figure out where each piece goes and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You’re trying to put a square shape into a round hole and it doesn’t work that way. You’re solution is obvious – either change the circle to a square or a square to a circle. It’s pretty black and white and the only reason I could spend two hours trying to figure out why it won’t work is because I forgot a character somewhere.

CSS is like trying to put together a three-dimensional puzzle when you can’t see the edges of the other pieces. You can easily follow the logic in your programming because you can see what’s going in and what’s coming out of each step and programming doesn’t change because of the web-browser you’re using.

Developing something in css depends on what version of the CSS standard is used, what browsers support it, and what browsers have bugs when one item is combined with the next. There are several hundred ways of defining styles, and even multiple times in multiple files. It’s hard to keep tabs on where each element is getting its styles from.

Oh well, both are still better than WF.