{"id":241478,"date":"2016-05-10T15:38:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T22:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/css-tricks.com\/?p=241478"},"modified":"2016-05-10T15:38:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T22:38:09","slug":"answers-ama-hashnode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/answers-ama-hashnode\/","title":{"rendered":"Answers from AMA on Hashnode"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently did an AMA on Hashnode<\/a> and it was lots of fun! I enjoyed the questions and the simple format. I figured I’d plop some of my answers here in the spirit of blogging<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Michele Bourdon: Are you a fan of CSS frameworks? What do you think of them?<\/h3>\n

Maybe a telling fact: I’ve never used one for a real project.<\/p>\n

When I’m the CSS lead on a project (kinda my thing), I feel most comfortable when I’m intimately familiar with everything happening in the stylesheets. I get that intimacy by writing it (and reviewing what other people write). Not to mention I enjoy writing CSS.<\/p>\n

I get squirmy when using any outside CSS at all.<\/p>\n

But as usual, I’m of two minds. I’m also extremely impressed by some CSS frameworks. Bootstrap is kind of amazing and I feel like the “ugh, bootstrap is everywhere blah blah” sentiment is overblown and unnecessary. I’m super impressed by Foundation. I think it’s approach is probably my favorite (I get good results applying it to raw semantic markup.) It’s starting to get a little weird though recently with all the different varieties native apps and stuff.<\/p>\n

For the teams out there that don’t really have a CSS lead, or don’t have one that is excited about that being their job, you can likely get a lot of productivity out of a framework.<\/p>\n

There are also about 20 billion of them because of this weird thing that happens<\/a> where people that have some success writing CSS from scratch want to turn their thinking into a framework for the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

Ida Hansen: How do you maintain and manage both CodePen and CSS-Tricks?<\/h3>\n

A photo was recently taken of me proving that I actually have three hands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also a tiny monster<\/a> forces me to code quickly.<\/p>\n

But really, this is my favorite quote about productivity.<\/a><\/p>\n

I just work on stuff and that’s it. I don’t even work particularly hard. I just checked my RescueTime and it’s kind of embarrassing actually. It’s not even 8 hours a day. I need to up my game there.<\/p>\n

Also, if it’s not clear, I’m a founder at both CSS-Tricks and CodePen, but many people work on both projects. Here’s the CSS-Tricks Team<\/a> and the CodePen Team<\/a>. I also do ShopTalk Show<\/a> with my friend and co-host Dave Rupert.<\/p>\n

Pankaj Parashar: What are your thoughts about Atomic CSS<\/a>?
\n<\/h3>\n

It weirds me out.<\/p>\n

I’m not super compelled by it.<\/p>\n

But, I know some very smart people that ARE compelled by it. I would use this kind of thinking:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Can we be comfortable and productive with this thing?<\/li>\n
  2. Does it seem like this thing will serve us well into the future?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If both of those questions get confident YES’s, use the thing and ignore the nay-sayers.<\/p>\n

    Fred Copeland: What made CodePen a huge success, given that the front-end world already had jsFiddle, Plunker etc?<\/h3>\n

    Thanks for considering CodePen a huge success. Time will tell, on that one, but I’m very confident!<\/p>\n

    It’s true that tools like jsFiddle and JSBin predate CodePen, and CodePen was born in their shadow. We had this consideration: “What are the coolest demos people have made on jsFiddle, TODAY?” How do you find them? Who decides that?<\/p>\n

    Based on that, we decided to make the homepage of CodePen a showcase rather than the editor itself. We decided to have user accounts and make CodePen a social network in addition to a code editor. We decided we’ll pick some of the best work on CodePen and show it to you. We decided we’ll use algorithms to determine popular work, so you have a voice in what is popular as well. The community that came out of that is what makes CodePen different. Well, one of many things ;)<\/p>\n

    Sirwan Afifi: What tech\/language\/framework you’re going to utilize in the next 6 months?<\/h3>\n

    The biggest project going right now is Rails, but React\/Redux inside of it, and SCSS\/PostCSS.<\/p>\n

    (From another related question:) I’d prefer nobody in the world picks a JavaScript framework based on what I use. I’m a follower in that regard, and definitely not qualified to be a trendsetter.<\/p>\n

    Why did object-oriented CSS (ala @stubbornella<\/a>) never take off?<\/h3>\n

    I think it did! Just in a more insidious and effective way. Nicole’s lessons were things like…<\/p>\n