as someone who is intimately familiar with CSS and doesn't have a problem using it - it's still poorly designed. I think the problem you have with it (and the o

as someone who is intimately familiar with CSS and doesn't have a problem using it - it's still poorly designed. I think the problem you have with it (and the one I have with it) is that it is in no way systemic. It's like PHP - it's evolved over time not by iterating on the foundations, but by tacking new features on. Flexbox/grid have solved a lot of the layout issues that required messing around with display:inline-block/margin:auto/float/clear for so long (by basically pretending none of it ever existed), but other issues are still around. The fact that box-sizing:border-box is not the default is basically down to netscape winning the browser wars. Shadows overlap even when they logically shouldn't. It's not nightmare-level but it is hard to mentally model at first. I don't think it helps that most of the CSS I've seen in the wild is vastly over-complicated.