[dada78641]

While I agree that CSS is sometimes difficult and obtuse, and getting things working in it is more of an art than a science, it's actually shockingly easy to get basic layouts working in it these days even as a total beginner. CSS is very powerful and you can learn the basics very quickly.

It's also worth keeping in mind that CSS is sometimes more complicated than it seems like it should be due to accessibility concerns and flexibility. That's why you can take some HTML produced by some part of your system and use it in completely different contexts with totally different designs, entirely as is, just by adding a few different rules.

I've been doing HTML dev since the late 90s and things were infinitely more difficult back in the old days. CSS might have been simpler, but doing complex things required tons of bizarre hacks that also made your design more frail and less accessible. These days CSS has improved to the point where you can do just about anything, and even very complicated effects can fairly easily be deconstructed just by looking at the devtools and poking around until you get it.

CSS isn't perfect, but all things considered I'm not complaining.