#154 Why developers needn't fear CSS – with the King of CSS himself Kevin Powell

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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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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