> I think CSS is "difficult to understand" because most people who do front-end don't want to spend a day learning it. I couldn't disagree more. There are a to

> I think CSS is "difficult to understand" because most people who do front-end don't want to spend a day learning it. I couldn't disagree more. There are a ton of reasons CSS really is hard, even when one understands the box model etc. E.g.: 1. Hugely non-modular. An element's behavior always depends, to some extent, on styles applied to other elements. Systems full of entangled global state are inherently complex, separate from any other concern. 2. Highly magical. E.g. if you want to control how elements stack with z-index, you need to also know that z-index is ignored for elements that aren't positioned, which in turn means you need to set up your margins differently because positions disable margin collapsing. There's no one "model" to learn; it's a big morass of interconnected rules and edge cases. 3. Extremely fragile. Layout changes that a human user might consider minor often can't be done without significantly redesigning the page. Of course, problems like these can all be mitigated to various extents. But that takes care and experience; it's not just a matter of reading some articles like you imply.