That's kind of a false dichotomy, since once you understand CSS rules on something such that it works somewhere, you spend a lot of time interpreting addendums

That's kind of a false dichotomy, since once you understand CSS rules on something such that it works somewhere, you spend a lot of time interpreting addendums on caniuse and trying to arrange graceful degradation. If you only have to make it work on one browser with one version, or if the feature is extremely old, or if you can do it outside a larger system of constraints, then you can just follow the step-by-step guides the article is complaining about.