[taeric]

My personal take is largely to blame the css/html divide as the biggest hurdle here. Maybe it is the three fold css/html/js divide, more broadly?

It isn't that any one of them is bad. But, having three seems to want to relate to a Conway's Law where you have three different "teams" somewhat collaborating with each other. In reality, far more is done by a single team than otherwise. Even when you have a graphics design team, often they build their first artifacts in other systems and then it is down to that single team to try and bridge them together.

There is also the absurd level of flexibility that was baked into CSS. Somewhat ironic that we are digging our way out of the limitations of CSS by adding more and more flexibility to it.