WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
World Congress 2023 • Aug 11, 2023

Building a component library for modern challenges

Filip Rakowski

Opinionated component libraries are quietly killing your developer flow. Discover why treating UI elements as copy-paste snippets instead of rigid dependencies is the secret to scaling frontend architecture.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 5 min

The struggle with modern component libraries

Why developers often end up writing nasty hacks to customize UI libraries after an initial period of acceleration.

#2 about 2 min

The main promise of UI component libraries

How reusable visual elements aim to increase productivity by eliminating repetitive frontend groundwork.

#3 about 5 min

Customization complexity in popular UI libraries

How tools like Material UI use extensive props and opinionated styling engines that steepen the learning curve.

#4 about 2 min

Challenges with complex components and global theming

The difficulty of slightly adjusting opinionated composite elements against rigid master abstractions.

#5 about 4 min

The myth of universal opinionated UI frameworks

Why heavily opinionated components fail to scale gracefully across projects of varying sizes and custom requirements.

#6 about 3 min

Impact of developer experience on productivity

How complex customizations disrupt cognitive flow and decrease overall developer productivity.

#7 about 3 min

The problem with upgradeable UI components

Why shipping visual elements as versioned packages creates abstraction flaws and risky breaking changes.

#8 about 2 min

Discovering the true value of UI acceleration

Realizing that immediate access to accessible and semantically correct primitives is the core benefit of a library.

#9 about 3 min

Adopting a copy-paste UI component architecture

How pasting raw utility class code removes artificial limitations and empowers infinite customizability.

#10 about 3 min

Scaling with base components and UI primitives

Combining globally customizable base elements with raw markup enables a versatile and reusable design system.

#11 about 3 min

Selecting versatile developer tools over popular opinions

Why simple and flexible developer tools are ultimately more reliable than highly opinionated industry defaults.

Matching moments

4:42 min

Balancing functionality and custom styling in UI development

Muhammad Ahsan Ayaz · WWC 2021

4:23 min

Building a framework-agnostic design system with web components

Manuel Mauky · WWC 2023

3:46 min

The rise of modern component-based frameworks and modular architecture

Sasha Shynkevich · LIVE

1:20 min

Exploring tooling choices for interactive UI components

Aurora Scharff Aurora Scharff · WWC 2025

3:24 min

Introduction to building reusable Angular components

Valentine Awe · WWC 2022

7:13 min

Optimizing component libraries for developers and product managers

Erica Rider +1 · WWC 2021

More from World Congress 2023

The year 3000, a brief history of Web Development thumbnail
25:30
over 2 years ago

The year 3000, a brief history of Web Development

Lorenzo Pieri

Demografie nutzen um jedem Bewerber das passende Angebot zu machen! thumbnail
8:52
over 2 years ago

Demografie nutzen um jedem Bewerber das passende Angebot zu machen!

Nathalie Gierth

Guided Memory Management: Rust's Ownership Model thumbnail
0:18
over 2 years ago

Guided Memory Management: Rust's Ownership Model

Stefan Baumgartner

Passwordless future: WebAuthn and Passkeys in practice thumbnail
32:32
over 2 years ago

Passwordless future: WebAuthn and Passkeys in practice

Clemens Hübner

External Secrets Operator: the secrets management toolbox for self-sufficient teams thumbnail
30:07
over 2 years ago

External Secrets Operator: the secrets management toolbox for self-sufficient teams

Moritz Johner

Building Reliable Serverless Applications with AWS CDK and Testing thumbnail
25:18
over 2 years ago

Building Reliable Serverless Applications with AWS CDK and Testing

Raphael Manke

Upcoming sessions on this topic

Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Architecting AI in Angular: WebMCP, A2UI, and the Agent Experience

Ankita Sood

Sr. Principal Engineer @ Secureworks | Angular GDE

Ankita Sood
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Beyond Vibe Coding: An AI Builder’s Guide to Migrating 10k+ React Components

Shubham Chaurasia

Senior Software Engineer @ Meta

Shubham Chaurasia
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

When Humans Stop Writing Code: Rethinking Languages, Compilers, and Responsibility

Simon Auer

Organizer of flutter vienna meetup and CEO of marqably

Simon Auer
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

How to generate business value through performance optimizations

Nikolai Sidiropulo

Software Engineer at Meta

Nikolai Sidiropulo
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

Full Stack with Flutter - are we there yet?

Nemanja Stošić

Senior Flutter Developer

Nemanja Stošić
Open session

World Congress 2026 North America

One Repo, One Strategy: Scalable Full-Stack Testing in a Monorepo World

Bartosz Leczycki, Paweł Matynia

Bartosz Leczycki
Paweł Matynia

Related videos

Building a framework-independent component library thumbnail
19:46
WWC 2025 • 12 months ago

Building a framework-independent component library

Tobias Scholz

Keith Cirkle of GitHub on React Fatigue thumbnail
49:32
Coffee With Developers • over 1 year ago

Keith Cirkle of GitHub on React Fatigue

Keith Cirkle

Extending HTML with Web Components thumbnail
41:54
WWC 2022 • about 4 years ago

Extending HTML with Web Components

Rowdy Rabouw

Unlocking Seamless Collaboration: Design-First APIs for UI Components thumbnail
28:35
LIVE • almost 2 years ago

Unlocking Seamless Collaboration: Design-First APIs for UI Components

Lucien Immink

But, you're not Facebook thumbnail
31:12
WWC 2022 • about 4 years ago

But, you're not Facebook

Kristijan Ristovski

On tour with heroes == Moving from Angular to WebComponents thumbnail
43:08
LIVE • almost 6 years ago

On tour with heroes == Moving from Angular to WebComponents

Benjamin Glusa

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.