Is CSS a Programming Language? w/ Kevin Powell

This week, Robbie and Adam talk with Kevin Powell about the quirks and complexities of CSS, from Tailwind and Flexbox to AI’s failure to write decent styles. While sipping some Crown Royal Black, they dig into weird web history, emerging CSS specs, toast milestones, and the beauty of clean code. In this episode: (00:00) - Intro (02:51) - Whiskey rating & review: Crown Royal Black (07:54) - Hot Take: Is CSS a programming language? (09:54) - Hot Take: Was CSS-in-JS a mistake? (10:53) - Hot Take: Grid vs Flexbox (12:31) - Hot Take: Tailwind vs vanilla CSS? (16:05) - Kevin's favorite place to write CSS (17:45) - What CSS feature scares Kevin the most? (19:20) - Kevin's first CSS pre-processor (22:40) - CSS features that are taking too long to ship (27:22) - text-box-trim vs margin-trim (29:53) - Why attr() is a game-changer for CSS (31:18) - NPM package chaos and security concerns (32:16) - The “billion laughs” CSS attack (33:19) - Why can't AI write CSS? (36:52) - Wake-and-bake? Kevin’s sourdough & kombucha hobby (38:42) - Kevin’s homebrewing and water shortage woes (40:28) - Hobbies, football, and making time for fun (42:44) - What would Kevin do if not in tech? (44:41) - Kevin's favorite CSS typo (45:58) - Rebuilding Tailwind from scratch (46:53) - Vanilla CSS vs. Tailwind: Who wins a coding race? (50:08) - Plugs Links Crown Royal Black: https://www.crownroyal.com/canadian-whisky/crown-royal-black All Things Open: https://allthingsopen.org/ General Musings: https://www.youtube.com/@GeneralMusings Frontend Masters: https://frontendmasters.com/ Shopify: https://www.shopify.com/ Ken Wheeler: https://x.com/ken_wheeler/ JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript Figma: https://www.figma.com/ CSS Grid: https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_grid.asp Flexbox: https://www.w3schools.com/css/css3_flexbox.asp Tailwind CSS: https://tailwindcss.com/ Grok: https://grok.com/ CodePen: https://codepen.io/ VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com Emmet: https://emmet.io/ Vue: https://vuejs.org/ Saas: https://sass-lang.com/ Stylus: https://www.npmjs.com/package/stylus TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/ CoffeeScript: http://coffeescript.org/ Sarah Soueidan: https://twitter.com/SaraSoueidan Shepherd: https://www.shepherdjs.dev/ NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/ Swatch: https://swatch.dev/ Colorzilla: https://www.colorzilla.com/ TinyColor: https://bgrins.github.io/TinyColor/ CrowdStrike: https://www.crowdstrike.com/ Ember: https://emberjs.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/ Chris Coyier: https://x.com/chriscoyier Virginia Tech: https://www.vt.edu/ The Eagles: https://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/ Saquon Barkley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saquon_Barkley Adam Wathan: https://x.com/adamwathan/ Kevin on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kevinpowell Connect with Kevin Website: https://www.kevinpowell.co/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kevinpowell.co Courses: https://www.kevinpowell.co/courses/ Connect with the hosts Robbie Wagner: https://x.com/RobbieTheWagner Chuck Carpenter: https://x.com/CharlesWthe3rd Adam Argyle: https://x.com/argyleink Subscribe and stay in touch Website: https://whiskey.fm Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whiskey-web-and-whatnot/id1552776603 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/19jiuHAqzeKnkleQUpZxDf Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1552776603 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhiskeyWebAndWhatnot Whiskey Web and Whatnot MerchEnjoying the podcast and want us to make more? Help support us by picking up some of our fresh merch at https://whiskey.fund.