#066 - CSS Is The Hardest Programming Language

In today’s episode, we bring Adam Argyle, a CSS Dev Rel at Google, content creator, co-host at CSS Podcast, Bad At CSS Podcast and host of GUI Challenges. He’s also the creator of a bunch of tools and utilities for the front-end. We’re going to touch on a lot of hot topics, regarding the difficulty and power of CSS, how programmers most of the time underestimate and dismiss it as something trivial when in reality it’s one of the hardest things to master in the programming world. We also go over AI, the barriers between designers and developers and a bunch of other topics. Learn back-end development - https://www.boot.dev Listen on your favorite podcast player: https://www.backendbanter.fm Adam's Website: https://nerdy.dev/ Adam's X/Twitter: https://x.com/argyleink Adam on Chrome For Developers: https://chromeextensionsdocs.appspot.com/authors/argyle/ The CSS Podcast: https://thecsspodcast.libsyn.com/ Bad at CSS Podcast: https://badatcss.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:51 CSS Wizard has entered the chat 02:37 HTML and CSS are not programming languages 07:44 There's a case for complex things using CSS 10:28 CSS is declarative by nature 17:58 Writing CSS is a pain 20:43 AI isn't a threat to CSS 21:19 Breaking barriers between designers and developers 26:33 Getting to an entry-level competency on the backend is a bit more difficult when compared to the frontend 31:37 Adam's backstory 33:40 Knowing everything 34:56 The majority of the complexity lives on the frontend a lot of the times 38:48 South Park Reality 39:49 BFF vs BOF (Backend for frontend vs Backend of the Frontend) 47:03 CSS is typed in the browser 51:28 Take on why are there so many mormons and ex-mormons in the webdev and tech influencer scene? 54:08 Where to find Adam