As someone who started when CSS was so underpowered that layout was still done with <table>… I remember the introduction of every new CSS feature, and I will cherish them all forever.
The introduction of flexbox was like Christmas to me, and CSS grid was all my birthdays and Christmases at once.
It’s definitely much easier when you learn all of these features as a drip drip drip over decades.
I can’t imagine picking up CSS from scratch as a new dev in 2023. It must be extremely intimidating.
Although on balance, I’d say that despite the extra features, CSS is a lot simpler now than it was in the 00s and early 10s. The rendering engines are much better and agree almost all the time, in the past you’d spend a most of your time debugging your layout in different browsers, or fighting CSS to get it to get it to make the layout that you want (and eventually giving up and using a table)
The introduction of flexbox was like Christmas to me, and CSS grid was all my birthdays and Christmases at once.
It’s definitely much easier when you learn all of these features as a drip drip drip over decades.
I can’t imagine picking up CSS from scratch as a new dev in 2023. It must be extremely intimidating.
Although on balance, I’d say that despite the extra features, CSS is a lot simpler now than it was in the 00s and early 10s. The rendering engines are much better and agree almost all the time, in the past you’d spend a most of your time debugging your layout in different browsers, or fighting CSS to get it to get it to make the layout that you want (and eventually giving up and using a table)