#154 Why developers needn't fear CSS – with the King of CSS himself Kevin Powell

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Dec 20, 2024

Kevin Powell, a renowned designer and CSS expert with a popular YouTube channel, dives into the importance of mastering CSS, especially for accessibility in web development. He shares how learning to skateboard helped him escape 'Tutorial Hell' and emphasizes the value of teaching for enhancing one’s understanding. The conversation covers the evolution of CSS, highlighting advancements like Flexbox and Grid. Powell also reflects on the joys and challenges of transitioning from a traditional educator to a successful content creator, underscoring the necessity of real-world practice.

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INSIGHT

CSS's Deceptive Simplicity

CSS's declarative nature makes it appear deceptively simple initially.
Its underlying complexity becomes apparent as designs get more intricate, demanding a deeper understanding of its mechanics.

ADVICE

Prioritize Accessibility

Prioritize accessibility from the start to avoid technical debt.
Early integration is simpler than fixing accumulated issues later, ensuring broader user access.

INSIGHT

Technical Debt in Web Design

Technical debt in web design is a real debt with accruing interest.
Ignoring design and CSS issues now creates more substantial problems later when building features.

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On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Kevin Powell. He's a designer, a software engineer, and an expert in CSS. He's runs a CSS-focused YouTube channel with nearly a million subscribers. There's nothing sensational there – he literally just teaches people CSS.

Support for this podcast comes from a grant from Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers tools to rapidly build websites with everything out-of-the-box, then extend, replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn more at https://wixstudio.com.

Support also comes from the 11,043 kind folks who support freeCodeCamp through a monthly donation. Join these kind folks and help our mission by going to https://www.freecodecamp.org/donate

CORRECTION: I (Quincy) say during the interview that the Uber found a way to access microphones on iOS without users' knowledge. There have been documented cases of malware doing this (like Pegasus) but Uber didn't do this. They did do a lot of other shady things, like continue collecting data even after you deleted their app – but mic spying was not one of them. Yes, early Uber was an ethical tire fire. But it's important to get facts right here.

We talk about:

- Why you should still learn CSS in 2025 - How teaching concepts improves your own understanding of them - How learning to skateboard helped Kevin escape Tutorial Hell - Massive improvements coming to CSS

Links we talk about during our conversation:

- Kevin's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/kevinpowell

- Original Space Jam website Kevin mentions: https://www.spacejam.com/1996/

- The article that coined the term Responsive Design: https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/

- Kevin's freeCodeCamp article on how learning skateboarding helped him out of tutorial hell: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-learning-to-skateboard-helped-me-find-a-way-out-of-tutorial-hell/

- Kevin's freeCodeCamp course on building and deploying a portfolio page: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-build-a-portfolio-website-and-deploy-to-digital-ocean/

- Playable Minesweeper in CSS that Quincy mentions: https://codepen.io/bali_balo/pen/BLJONZ

- Acknowledged mistakes that are permanently coded into CSS: https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes

- Talk on why is CSS so weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHUtMbJw8iA