I also used to be annoyed by how long it took to get “basic useful functionality” for some use case in CSS. Over the years I have mellowed as I recognized it si

I also used to be annoyed by how long it took to get “basic useful functionality” for some use case in CSS. Over the years I have mellowed as I recognized it simply takes a long time to converge on what functionality is actually desired, and then what systems need to be in place so you can request that functionality in the most obvious location in your code (e.g. it turns out we really want to put the request for centering on the element to be centered, not the parent) along with figuring out the truly minimal, truly necessary information to carry out that functionality — and then further still to implement those needed systems in all major browsers. It’s just a long and incremental process by its nature and we probably can’t do much better than that. Ironically, the fact that the state of the art changes every few years is evidence that this process, though slow, does work reliably well.