Front-End Development Is Not a Problem to Be Solved

I completely agree with Robin Rendle here:

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Bootstrap, or CSS-in-JS, or CSS Modules, or fancy design tools. But building our careers around the limitations of these tools is a minor tragedy. Front-end development is complex because design is complex. Transpiling our spoken language into HTML and CSS requires vim and nuance, and always will. That’s not going to be resolved by a tool but by diligent work over a long period of time.

I reckon HTML and CSS deserve better than to be processed, compiled, and spat out into the browser, whether that’s through some build process, app export, or gigantic framework library of stuff that we half understand. HTML and CSS are two languages that deserve our care and attention to detail. Writing them is a skill.

HTML and CSS are two of the building blocks of the web. Even if you’re generating them via some app, framework, or programmatic process, it’s still valuable to understand the nuances and intricacies of how they work. Trying to avoid “dirtying” your hands with them altogether is bad form for anyone who considers themselves a web developer.