3 Things I Learnt This Month

Hey there. I’ve been experimenting, building, and learning in a lot of different areas as of late and there are couple things that really stuck with me. The 3 things worth sharing:

1. Why People Don’t Seem To Like CSS

I’m finally starting to understand why most devs groan at CSS (even more so than JS 😅). And it has nothing to do with it being “hard” in the same way as programming logic, it’s more like describing your intention and letting the browser figure it out. That makes it feel unpredictable at times.

How I got to this conclusion - I’m building out components for a component library, and somehow just when I think I’ve hit that sweet spot, it comes back from QA with: “The spacing seems a bit off” (even if it’s exactly what’s in the design 🤦‍♂️) but because there is something with even an extra pixel of padding it kinda throws the whole thing off (maybe I should revisit the box model).

Once I stopped treating CSS like strict code and started thinking of it as rules and constraints that cascade, it began to click. I don’t hate it anymore, it feels like a puzzle to be solved.

2. Why Labs over Projects

I’ve been reframing how I approach side projects. Instead of putting pressure on myself to make everything polished and portfolio-ready, I’ve started thinking of them as Labs - spaces for experimentation. That mindset shift makes it more fun, and ironically, I end up learning a lot more, a lot faster because I’m not scared to break things and try something I’m not familiar with.

3. Maybe guitar and programming aren’t so different

Practicing guitar has taught me something about coding: progress comes from focusing on one small skill at a time until it flows naturally. Learning a John Mayer or BB King solo on guitar feels just like debugging a tricky bug - frustrating at first, but once you slow down, isolate the problem, and repeat with patience, everything starts coming together.

Thanks for stopping by.
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Lilitha Mdlalana