#066 - CSS Is The Hardest Programming Language

Backend Banter

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