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On the other hand, scaling CSS is fundamentally hard especially in a large team where it's more of an organizational problem.

It takes eternal vigilance to maintain it. Refactoring it is a huge feat. And when you want to modify or add a single component, it doesn't make sense to re-cred in the whole CSS apparatus, and it's not necessarily trivial to figure out where to make the CSS change, so CSS files tend to become append-only.

It's like how learning how to "write clean code" doesn't really change much about how hard it is to change large software systems over time in a large team.



These difficulties with CSS are how you know an org can't "design system".

You will see similar issues with their Word and PowerPoint, setting properties on elements instead of styles.


Yeah, most orgs use Figma as the source of truth, so if your designers don’t “design system”, it finds its way into the codebase.

Even if they do follow a design system, it tends to evolve over time, and it can be a bumpy road to reach a mature one.


Yeah, this is exactly my point. It's hard to do, doubly so when most folks don't value it.




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