CHRIS
COYIER.
A conversation about making stuff, making a living, and making a little room for weirdness on the web.
HAND-CRAFTED
VIBES ✳
What if you had to be Chris?
Nathan opens with a strange assignment: Chris disappears into his camper van for a week, and Nathan must impersonate him at work. The survival guide? Make jokes in Slack, ask pointed questions, rub your chin, and maybe ship a little design polish.
So… is web development still a job?
After nearly two decades on the web, Chris is watching AI rewrite the rules. Making a little app is easier than ever. Making a sustainable business? That's another story.
He doesn't pretend to know exactly where the industry will land. He sees real uncertainty for developers—alongside a remarkable new freedom for anyone who wants to make software.
“The software of your dreams is… not far away.”— Chris Coyier
Describe it. Build it. Share it.
<!-- An idea becomes a website. --> <main> <h1>Family reunion!</h1> <p>See you there 👋</p> <!-- made by talking it through --> </main>
Chris tells a story about helping his mom make a family-reunion website with AI inside CodePen. She describes what she wants. The site changes. Before long, it's something she can share with family.
That is the hopeful side of this shift: people who never thought of themselves as coders can become makers.
Not every app needs to become a startup.
The job behind the code
Chris spends a lot of time organizing ideas, guiding his team at CodePen, deciding what to build next, and figuring out how to tell people about it. The code matters. So do the people, the product, and the story.
A brain full of sticky notes
→ scattered ideasEmail to self
→ remember this!Notion + Slack
→ team thoughts
Chris has notes everywhere: Bear, email, Notion, Slack. Surprisingly, he doesn't see the scatteredness as a problem.
Writing things down helps him think clearly and communicate. Sometimes a pile of words is exactly how you find the next good idea.
Permission to be weird
Nathan notices how much personality Chris puts into his own website. Chris talks about the freedom that comes from having made things publicly for a long time—and being willing to be a little whimsical.
Including an ongoing, extremely sophisticated joke involving strategically placed fart sounds. Yes, really.
joy: 100%;
seriousness: optional;
farts: apparently recurring;
“I think I'm more relatable when I'm more myself.”— Chris Coyier
Less screen. More strings.
Outside of work, Chris plays banjo, guitar, and bass. He joins friends for old-time Appalachian music around Bend, Oregon, and heads to festivals when he can.
He likes keeping his music life and tech life relatively separate. But there's a thread: he's less interested in obsessing over the gear than in what you actually make with it.
Don't just
collect tools.
Make something.
Whether it's a website, a family tool, a tune played with friends, or a well-placed ridiculous joke, the joy lives in what you create.
