It’s intriguing for sure, but when I want an icon without grabbing it from a source, I create it in XD.
I believe all developers should have some basic skills in the areas they use, be it art, audio, etc.
I’m not saying you need to be an expert. Just invest a weekend or two learning it. There are countless little things you can apply in your professional work.
Doesn’t make sense to do it yourself lol.
I genuinely enjoy coding SVG and creating animations with them. It’s easy to make them dynamic as well.
As a learning exercise? Sure, go for it. But in reality? No thanks, it’s impractical when software like Illustrator or Inkscape exists to automate the code for you.
Nahhh, I leave that kind of nerdy task to the designers.
I’ve done that in the past. I saw no reason to settle for a provided JPG of a triangle when a hand-coded SVG would be smaller, easily inlined, and visually appealing with transparency.
Other comments have clearly outlined why hand-coding your own icons isn’t typically the best option.
Yet, it remains a useful introduction to SVG for those eager to explore.
Pro tip: Instead of hardcoding a color for stroke, try using currentColor, allowing you to change the icon color via CSS. Although this works best for SVGs embedded directly in HTML and not for SVGs loaded via the img tag.
I typically don’t hand-code SVGs. I prefer vector graphics software like Illustrator, and I export my icons as SVG.
I’d just utilize Adobe Illustrator.
I’d only hand-code if animation is required.
As a full stack dev, sometimes I do.
Great post! SVGs have been a bit of a mystery for me, especially with the frequent use of the path attribute. I understand, yet don’t quite grasp, why many take the title so literally. While as developers we wouldn’t realistically write SVGs ourselves, understanding how they function is indeed beneficial, which this post clearly illustrates.
This approach isn’t the right way to resolve the issue. It’s much smarter to use a graphic editor and export as SVG.
Whenever I need changes, which is very rare, I let AI handle it. If it can’t, I consult the UX team and let them tackle it.
Does prompting them count as coding? It actually works surprisingly well.