2026 10 23 audio: Hello my friend and friends, and welcome to my podcast General Musings. My name is Kevin, and here at this podcast, I like to talk about whatever is front of mine for me in any given week, usually in some way that's related to front-end development. And just before I continue with this, you know, usual house cleaning that I like to put at the beginning of these ones this week. I just want to let you know that maybe you know already, you probably do if you're listening to this, but just in case you don't and you like the types of things I talk about here, you'd probably also like my newsletter. The link to it is the very first thing that is just down below. Or down below, show notes, whatever we want to say. it is there. But yeah, for this week, we're we're staying on topic, I guess, of front-end development, because what I want to talk about how is every video that I post on my main channel these days gets questions asking me why I'm still making tutorial content. And honestly, I have a few different reasons that I'm Doing it still. And this is obviously because of like with the rays of AI and everything like that. But there's some a few very good reasons, I think, on why I continue to do it. The very first one of those reasons is because I enjoy it, which I think is a good reason. obviously it's you know, it's a YouTube channel, your afterviews to a certain extent and everything else with it, but I honestly enjoy writing CSS and teaching CSS. And as long as there's someone out there willing to listen to me, I think I'm going to continue doing it. There's a more important thing and reason I keep doing it though, that involves a little bit of I think to push back a bit on the problems that are arising in the industry today in terms of laziness. but we'll we'll circle back there because it's not even about writing code. I I don't think necessarily like there there's so much going on these days that maybe you can get away without writing code as much as we used to be able to. It's just This thing that seems to be happening, but it's also driving this intense laziness. Maybe and laziness might be the wrong word. Maybe it's like lazy for me to be sticking to that word. But if I think of something better as we're going through this, I'll bring it up. But I want to talk first about the fact that when I started my channel, I started it purely as a hobby project with no real intentions to have other people like listening and watching. And I was like, hopefully, some people will watch this and get something out of it. That was mostly the goal. And for the first six months that I had my channel. I was celebrating if a video got 10 views on it. So, you know, I guess I'm gonna keep making videos because there are people out there who still enjoy this type of thing. That might amaze some people who are listening to this, by the way, because or at least the ones posting, why you you know, why are you still making tutorial videos and writing CSS? And there was one that isn't CSS outdated, and I'm like, you're vibecoding to write CSS. But anyway, that's a bit beside the point. But it's yeah, this idea that there are people out there that are getting value from it. And I know that because people leave comments anytime I talk about maybe being a little bit down on like, should I keep on doing it? And I have definitely had those thoughts cross my mind at times. But yeah, is people keep telling me they're getting value from it. So as long as there's some people doing that and as long as I keep enjoying Doing what I'm doing, I plan to continue doing it. But that doesn't mean I haven't thought of like a plan B and a plan C and other things because maybe it won't continue to be my main thing that I'm doing. But like I was I've been doing this for so long now. I really it's part of my identity and I do plan to continue the tutorial side of things, at least for this foreseeable future. And part of it's also because I like teaching things, and that's like something I really, really get a lot of value out of myself because I learn a lot more doing it. So it's like kind of selfish that I like teaching. but I like seeing that other people can take what I've done and do better stuff with it. That's like the best of everything. And one of the reasons I like going to conferences and other stuff like that is when I'm having conversations with people. And they're like, yeah, I remember your video where you did this, and like yeah, they're like, we use it like this at our company now, we expand it. We're doing this and this and this with it. And we're just like, that's so cool. Or people post like on social media sharing a code pen that they created based on an idea that I shared in a video that's 10 times cooler than what I did. Like, Anytime I see that stuff, it just makes me so happy. and just knowing that I'm making things more accessible to people is is great. and I think the other thing that maybe some people are missing too is that there's still people entering this industry now that want to learn some of the languages that they're doing. Like currently, my introduction to VS Code video is still one of my best performing month over month. my HTML and CSS for absolute beginners is continuing to do pretty good. Like there's People who do genuinely want to learn this stuff and I want to keep on helping to provide that type of content for them. And I will say, like, one other thing though that's really important here is there's I have a big following. So like whenever I get comments telling me to continue, there was one that I had recently where they said, Kevin, I really value your content and your teaching. I know it's getting harder with it. What's I know it's getting harder with what's happening right now. But I've always been a fan and I'll continue to be. And another person recently said, thank you for keeping the channel going and continuing to share your knowledge. It's still hugely valuable. And as I said, that's part of my motivation is comments like these that are coming in. But I want to say really fast here, like I'm a big channel that maybe my views are down from what they used to be, but I get a lot of comments like that still. And there's a lot of smaller creators out there. There's less comments in general. So they hear that a lot less. And today we're losing lots of really high-quality educators. If you know anybody who's still making something, just let them know that you appreciate it. It's so important. It goes a really long way. And comments like that, when someone is unsure or is hesitant, or even if they're just they're in a really good mood already and they love what they're doing, hearing stuff like that just makes them feel even better. So, like if there's anyone out there other than me that you value, and I'm sure there are people, don't leave comments on this video. Take the time that you would leave. A comment here to go and tell a smaller creator the same thing or or how you value what they're doing. But yeah, going back to the other comments I'm getting, right? Like the one here where someone wrote, Who's still watching all this? With clawed code and the right skills, you can now slice up and implement an entire landing page design with 98 to 100% accuracy, including responsive design and excellent cross-browser support. Who still cares about all those little CSS details? And it's not even to be like, yeah, I'm still writing CSS, I'm like hardcore, old school, whatever it is. it it's more that like that that last part, who still cares about all the little CSS details that riles me up a little bit? because that's where I feel things are a problem. Already that comment is like, you know, first of all, like, why even they're they're saying like slice up and implement an entire landing page? Like we're using Photoshop, like it's the 90s. maybe that maybe that's what they're getting Claude to do, which would be fabulous. Some more table-based layouts would be great. But more realistically, I get what they're saying. But then, like, why not just get Claude to design it too? It could do that, right? Or whatever AI you want to be using. And you know, they they can do some design stuff and choose through tokens pretty good, but why why have a designer do something and then get Claude to implement it? And then who cares about the little details? And it's those things where I feel like the craft is falling apart. We're and when I say the craft, I mean the craft of making good quality things. And I know pe people have always been kind of lazy, right? But all this is enabling us to do is be more lazy than we have before. And I don't want to harp on that. I don't want to harp on the negative side of things. I want to say about why I'm still making content, which is that I want to show that the little details matter. And more of my content now, I am trying to position it in that way: of like, here's these cool effects we can do, and these cool things we can do, the GTA scroll effect and I was looking at one with like this details summary that when you click on it and the animations that can happen and the staggers that you can put in. Because if you're not prompting Cloud to do those types of things, it's not going to put them in there. It's gonna give you the same website that it gave the last 5,000 people. And we're definitely seeing that, right? We went through our bootstrap era and then these days we're going through the Cloud Code era where all websites look the same, even though they all have different fonts and different colors and Different gradient texts, but there's some tells that are in there, but they all still have the same thing. And there's these, you know, skill sets now or skill sets, these skills that people put out there to try and make it so they're not making websites that look the same and they still look the same. And it's this like big thing of you can do these amazing things. And I think that the whole rise of AI right now, maybe the cat's out of the bag, there's no going back. That's completely fine. But we should be using it to augment what we can do. These shouldn't be Something that's replacing what we were doing before, it should be allowing us to do more and do it better because it has the capability to do that. It's taking someone who was, you know, saying that they're a full stack engineer to maybe actually being a full stack engineer. Or someone said that in the comments before about like how maybe that's a thing now that you can be a talented full stack engineer over the entire stack because you're using AI to help you out. And I was like, I could see how that could actually start to happen in some ways. But the problem is it just becomes offloading the parts that you don't care about. So you're offloading the design or you're offloading the implementation of something and you're not thinking about the details and the cool things and the things that make the web fun and interesting. And that's what the web could be. And like web technologies now with CSS and all the changes that are happening there. And of course in HTML and C JavaScript as well. Like we have the technological capabilities to do so much more than we've ever been able to do. And we're just getting more of the same. And to me, that's why I want to continue making videos for the most part, is to show what's possible and to explore the fun avenues. And maybe that means I need to shift what I'm doing to reach more viewers. I don't know. And I'd love your comments on this below of do I need to start showing how we can use AI to do this? I I don't want to do that necessarily, but is it something that I should be doing to reach bigger audiences and show some of the fun things and how knowing these things that are possible. Because I know the languages that all of a sudden I can start doing cooler stuff than just the same site that you're getting every single time with the same features and the same look. And like it it is one of those things that like it went from ideas were cheap, but implementation is hard. And now implementation is becoming easier, but the implementation is not high quality and not good. And I really do think that we have the tools now to make things. Better than we've ever been able to do them before, but it's all about the easy answer. And that's always what these are being marketed as is it's easier and faster and everything there, and it's reducing friction. I've referenced lots of people that have talked about why friction is a good thing in the past. so that's like not to me what the goal of these should be. Instead of passing things off and making all these other things easier, it should be about elevating. And to me, talking about CSS and getting into the details. And having fun with it and showing that it can be fun, I think is elevating. And maybe people that are vibe coding something try and look for something that's possible because they're like they want to do that extra thing. And then they find one of my videos and it shows how to do it in CSS and they pass that off to Claude Code. I don't know, but like if if that's the thing that's going to make the web better, then that's what I want. Because I just want like I like the web. I've grown up with it. It's this amazing thing that I feel is. You know, we have division on social media, which sucks. We have more commodification coming as everything becomes monetized and like we used up the free web and everything, though I guess now we're also using AI to make the free web from things that were paid. And maybe that's even a good example in a way of how we can start leveling things up and doing more than we were doing. that's using you know, AI already has its issues with copyright and stealing and everything else around those that then is The whole Adobe thing is raising that up in a different way, potentially, but everybody hates Adobe, so it's kind of okay. I don't know. But it's like, you know, I think that's showing how individuals now have the ability to do more than we've been able to do. And I just feel like the web is becoming a more and more depressing place instead of a more and more fun place, which it should be, which is what should be happening and what we have more and more of the capability of actually doing now. And like how you craft. the websites and the apps and all these other things you're building, like that's completely up to you in this day and age. But it's about the thought and the care that goes into creating these things. And I think by learning the underlying languages and playing with them and experimenting with them, it leads to more iteration and ideas and seeing what's possible. Over just like throwing a prompt at something because when you're just doing that, it's really often really surface level. I said the word really too many times there, but it's okay. I think you know what I mean. But yeah, it's this idea that we should be iterating and playing with and experimenting more. And we have that capability, but it becomes too easy not to do that. So who however you're deciding to make things, and I'm not just talking about personal sites here either that are gonna be wacky and different and and funky, but This can be happening at a corporate website level as well. I'm sure you've come across some that you think like, wow, that's a pretty nice site. And it has extra details and things in there that are different. And that can happen in more serious ways and it can happen in quirky and fun ways as well. And so yeah, I'm still here and I'm still gonna be making CSS tutorials because I love the web and I strongly believe that it should be a fun and quirky and exciting place and that we're finally getting the web technologies that can make all of that happen and to try and fight against where things seem to be going, which is just a more sameness across everything and more boring and more lazy approach to creating all of these things that potentially could be just so cool. And so as usual, until next time, I implore you to go out and make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome.