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by raxxorraxor 291 days ago
I is certainly true for me that I didn't take the time to learn the intricacies of CSS behavior and I still think the cascading properties are the worst feature, namely concepts like specificity. It is hard to keep a mental model of styling rules and at some point it is just degrades to trial and error.

Nobody came up with a better alternative though (apart from the many dialects that transpile to CSS again).
2 comments
bobthepanda 290 days ago
In 2025 when starting from scratch all you really need is flexbox, css grid, and the box model and that will get you like 99% of the way on most layouts.

Specificity is really just

* ids take priority * the highest number of specified classes, and if there’s a tie it’s the first one specified * the highest number of types

The only problem is that most paths in frontend development say “slap a class on an element” and call it a day but you do need to be intentional about it and only specify what you need

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seanclayton 290 days ago
What about CSS layers[0] doesn't solve your specificity issues?

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@layer

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