Learning by copy-paste

Frontend First

Sam and Ryan use some recent Twitter discussion on copying + pasting code (instead of abstracting it for reuse) as a springboard for a discussion about how their thinking on low-level UI components and design systems has changed over the years.

Topics include:

• 0:00 - Intro
• 2:16 - Copy-paste vs. creating abstractions
• 11:43 - How we used to build shared UI components
• 15:34 - How we use UI components today
• 22:42 - Is copy-paste the easiest way for developers to implement consistent design?
• 27:41 - When should we create abstractions?
• 37:15 - Designing copy-pasteable APIs

Links:

• Dan’s tweet
• Build UI Newsletter
• Sam’s Server Actions video on YouTube