by Sacha Greif

Announcing the #StateOfCSS 2019 Survey

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I’ve been using CSS for 10+ years, so I know it pretty well by now. I can handle flexbox, I’ve mastered SASS, and I even know the difference between ems and rems.

But wait, now there’s Grid, too? And position: sticky? And what’s this I hear about this CSS-in-JS thing?? Turns out, maybe I don’t know CSS that well after all…

If you’re feeling the same, first let me just say that this is entirely normal. CSS has been evolving at record speed lately, and even the most dedicated developer can fall behind if they’re not careful.

Second, I have some good news for you: this is exactly why we’re launching our first ever State of CSS survey.

➡️ ️Take the survey now!

From JavaScript to CSS

You may have heard of the State of JavaScript survey, which we’ve been running every year since 2016. We’ve had over 20,000 developers take the survey this year, and it’s proven to be an extremely valuable source of data and insights about the JavaScript ecosystem’s latest trends.

So it only seemed natural to take a look at the other half of the web puzzle next.

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The 2018 State of JavaScript Survey

Since CSS and JS are completely different beasts, we’ve rethought our methodology from the ground up. For example we’ve introduced a new question type that asks not about libraries or frameworks, but about features of the language itself:

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The Great Divide

This is especially interesting since it comes at a time where many are talking about a “Great Divide” between the “front” of the front-end (HTML, CSS) and the “back” of the front-end (JavaScript and its many frameworks and libraries).

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On one side, HTML & CSS. On the other, JavaScript.

Now while there are plenty of people who are happily bridging that divide and taking on both sides of the front-end, there’s also nothing wrong with specializing and focusing on one domain over the other.

But either way, the survey will be a great chance to take a snapshot of the community as it currently exists, and see how this evolves over the next couple years.

Thanks & Next Steps

Huge thanks to Florian, Jen Simmons, Lochlan Bunn, David Luhr, and everybody else who gave me feedback and helped me fix a few vexing CSS bugs (ironic, I know…)!

We’ll keep the survey open until mid-march, and then take a month or so to process the results. So hopefully we’ll have something to show by late April. If you’d like to know when the results are published, don’t hesitate to sign up for our newsletter.

All that being said, all that’s left is for you to take the survey, and let us know what the State of CSS looks like in 2019. We’re excited to find out!

Sacha & Raphael