October 09, 2025

Is CSS a Programming Language? w/ Kevin Powell

52 minutes

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

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