[fdeee]

HTML and CSS are maybe the best UI creation combo if you only ever care about visual aesthetic design.

Any other aspects of what UI design is supposed to be about, ergonomics, usability, consistency, accessibility, internationalization is total crap in HTML/CSS. What is the taborder of your custom HTML/CSS datepicker? What will happen when I press <Esc> on your custom css popup? What is the keyboard shortcut to highlight that form field or to open that hamburger menu? How will my screenreader pronounce that hamburger symbol? Will it be the same for the next great HTML/CSS creation? Will the date format follow my locale?

HTML/CSS is great only if you are the strictly visual aesthetics kind of "designer" who only care about reproducing their napkin drawings and photoshop mockups. For all the other things one would ask of a proper UI, HTML/CSS is either useless or actively detrimental.

[prohobo]

You could just use a component library with standards.

Your argument is essentially that freedom means bad outcomes, but it actually means more possible outcomes.

[fdeee]

No. My argument is that HTML/CSS is unsuitable for the things I've named, some are impossible, most are hard and therefore rarely done.