[andrewflnr]

What I need to get the job done? I can't even find a library to do 2-way CSS style binding. I would have thought that was obvious, but it looks like I'll have to do it myself. To get the experience I want I might need to do a bunch of other stuff myself too. 

I understand the forces that produce multiple solutions to problems. Maybe OP was wrong about that being evidence of a deeper problem. But a lot of the problems are deficiencies in the underlying platform. That's the real problem IMO.