Are You Crippled By Your Preferences

This article directly follows after the one I wrote about types.

I caught a replay of a live stream the other day. During the live stream the developer was testing out Svelte, specifically the Svelte version of shadcn; svelte-shadcn.

And throughout the video all he was doing was comparing the official shadcn website to the svelte-shadcn one. To me this was kind of strange because these are two different projects. Yes, one might take inspiration from one from the other but they are not the same things.

Then he went on to say the reason why he never used Svelte is because he wants to use shadcn libraries. They’re not supported by Svelte, and that got me very worried. You refuse to explore another technology because this one styling thing is not there? 🤔

I believe as a developer you should be fluid.

You shouldn’t be crippled or locked in by one thing or the other. To me from the video and what he was doing, he’s so obsessed with shadcn to the point that anything that doesn’t support shadcn he can’t use, i.e. Svelte.

From what I understand when you were setting up the project with shadcn, there is a command on the website where you can just click a command and paste it and then it sets up the project and installs shadcn.

He tried to do same on the svelte-shadcn website; it didn’t work. He then said, “This could be an easy thing to do.”

I’m then thinking, “But it’s not the same thing. You can’t be expecting this one developer who ported some shadcn to svelte to be able to keep on track with every single thing shadcn is doing.” It doesn’t make sense particularly with the climate we’re in right now.

As of writing this svelte-shadcn has implemented that new project create flow

Preferences As A Crutch

This got me to wonder specifically about myself: is there anything that I’m too locked into that exploring something different is not possible?

If you’ve been following my articles for any point in time, you know that I useTYPO3, I’ve explored Eleventy, I’ve used Astro, I’ve used React, I’ve used just about everything. Not because I’m undecided, but because I want to be knowledgeable about the things people are using. To do that, I get out of my own way and learn, broaden my horizons, to not be locked into one thing, to not be crippled by my preferences.

Yes of course I’ve got things I prefer but that doesn’t stop me from using other things, which is in direct contrast to that Youtuber I was watching. He’s crippled by his preferences. If something doesn’t have shadcn in, he can’t use it because it takes too much time and it uses his tokens, as he says - this bring back a things I mentioned in the previous post; this over-relyance on LLMs.

It’s one of those lessons that I learnt early on that you’re not going to have one-to-one replication from one technology to the other.

You’re going to have to not only mold yourself, but be fluid enough to change and understand what the technology wants and do what it wants, not what we’re forcing it to be whatever you’re used to.

Wrapping Up

Well initially I didn’t think this was a problem but this has brought up several questions. Now I’m opening it up to you:

Do you not use a technology because it doesn’t support the things you used to? Do you?

Are you that close-minded that you can’t adapt?

If you are I don’t think you can call yourself a developer.

In my head as a developer, you’re supposed to be able to learn anything you’re driven to. Your driving tenet should be to learn. If you don’t understand something you take the time to learn what it wants not what you want.

Let me end this by saying:
Styling Has Existed Before Shadcn, It Will Exist Long After.

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