#154 Why developers needn't fear CSS – with the King of CSS himself Kevin Powell
The freeCodeCamp Podcast
Quincy Larson
5.0 • 549 Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2024
⏱️ 125 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Take our year-end freeCodeCamp podcast listener survey real quick: https://forms.gle/2M9NW776723uSdDT7
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.
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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
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | CSS is a source of frustration for so many developers. |
| 0:04.1 | What do they not get about CSS? |
| 0:05.6 | The biggest issue, though, is because CSS is a declarative language, |
| 0:09.8 | and especially because early on, like, background blue and it worked. |
| 0:13.5 | And then, like, font size, 26 pixels, and your font got bigger. |
| 0:16.6 | Like, it's so easy at the beginning. |
| 0:19.1 | When you first start doing it, the simplicity of it just makes it seem like this really simple language until all of a sudden it gets more complex. |
| 0:27.6 | But once you understand why those decisions were made and like how the behind the scene stuff is actually going on, it actually makes a lot of sense. |
| 0:34.7 | You're listening to the Free Code Camp podcast, your source |
| 0:38.5 | for raw, unedited interviews with developers. Please take two minutes to complete the listener |
| 0:46.8 | survey in the description. For this week's musical intro with yours truly on the drums, guitar, |
| 0:55.6 | bass, and keys 1986 |
| 0:57.6 | Nintendo Entertainment System |
| 0:59.9 | classic bubble |
| 1:01.6 | bubble. |
| 1:02.3 | I'm |
| 1:02.9 | music. I'm Oh Oh and |
| 1:11.6 | I'm |
| 1:12.6 | I'm |
| 1:13.6 | I'm |
| 1:14.6 | I'm |
| 1:15.6 | I'm |
... |
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