Frontend Architecture for Design Systems

Chapter 5. CSS

One of the greatest things about this industry is that we can freely sit down with fellow developers and have a cup of coffee. That might not seem like a big deal, but let me tell you, it is! We work in an industry based on open standards, open source software, open information, and open learning. The tools and techniques we use may be changing at an incredibly fast pace, but working in such an open industry is the key reason we’re able to keep up with them. Now this may surprise you, but there are other industries where you would never, ever sit down with a fellow practitioner to talk shop, unless they were paying you to do it. In these industries, every piece of knowledge, every trick, every preset, every macro, every document, and every shortcut is up for sale, and the last thing you’d want to do is sit down with a potential competitor and freely trade that information.

Now compare this to the Web. We thrive on sharing knowledge. We publish blogs, record video tutorials, create public code repos, write on Stack Overflow, respond to questions on IRC, and distribute CodePens, Gists, Sassmeisters, JSbins, and Pastebins, all so that others can learn the things that we know. Getting a cup of coffee and discussing your views on current web practices and new CSS frameworks is the most basic expression of how we share knowledge and how we learn in this industry.

So yeah! We work in an industry where inviting an associate out for a cup of coffee is not only acceptable, ...