I'm sorry, you're just completely incorrect. I'm a <insert HTML/CSS/JS worker title here> and literally do this every day. The Box model issue is being fixed with flexbox; centering is getting there too, gridding is improving; CSS animations are ENTIRELY about style and not to do with JS, it's to state hey, anything style related should be CSSable, not required another language. CSS is evolving just like any other language. I'd suggest if you really think this about CSS, you're doing it wrong. CSS was painful for a long time, but still light years ahead of HTML styling. This is how tools evolve.
>I'm sorry, you're just completely incorrect. I'm a <insert HTML/CSS/JS worker title here> and literally do this every day.
That's cool. I'm too HTML/JS/CSS dev (among other) and I'm not "just completly wrong".
>The Box model issue is being fixed with flexbox;
It could have been fixed 15 years ago. And when it appeared it broke a ton of librairies developped during those years, like CSS grids and stuffs like jQueryUI which still has some incompatibilites.
It's no fun at all if you have to maintains some older projets are if you are building services for regions were IE 8/9/10 are still used. Even in Europs for some markets you still get about 8% of those 3 versions of IE.
> centering is getting there too, gridding is improving;
Getting there? After 15+ years? We are talking about "centering" and "grids"! And still not there yet. This is just crazy.
>CSS animations are ENTIRELY about style and not to do with JS, it's to state hey, anything style related should be CSSable, not required another language.
Just try something basic : animate an element along a sinusoidal path in CSS. Look at the code you get .
Then try the same in JS.
> CSS is evolving just like any other language. I'd suggest if you really think this about CSS, you're doing it wrong. CSS was painful for a long time, but still light years ahead of HTML styling. This is how tools evolve.
CSS was less painful a few years ago when they were less devices and web applications were simpler. Now with all the differents devices screen size, the need of advanced applications CSS just doesn't make it. Responsive layout using media-queries just adding broken hack on top of the Web stack.
> It could have been fixed 15 years ago. And when it appeared it broke a ton of librairies developped during those years, like CSS grids and stuffs like jQueryUI which still has some incompatibilites.
And a hundred different problems with C could have been fixed any number of times, and that doesn't make it a bad tool.
> Getting there? After 15+ years?
I'm sorry, would you prefer it took 30? Is it not better that progress happens than not? The CSSWG is a glacial apparatus that create some of the worst bureaucratic bullshit I've ever seen, but CSS itself isn't a bad tool. Thanks to browser makers adding proprietary extensions they all agree on then shoving it down the throat of the WG helps a lot.
The pace of progress still doesn't mean it's a bad tool, or worse than what we had.
> Just try something basic : animate an element along a sinusoidal path in CSS. Look at the code you get .
> Then try the same in JS.
Still doesn't prove CSS is somehow the worst thing ever and kill puppies.
Yes, programming for the web is hard. Programming is pretty much always hard, no matter how easy we make it because humans suck at long term planning. CSS is still leaps and bounds better than what we had, and makes a lot of things incredibly easy.
> And a hundred different problems with C could have been fixed any number of times, and that doesn't make it a bad tool.
CSS is just a presentation language, you can't compare it with C which is much much more. The problem with CSS is it's the only thing we have appart from HTML tables for building layouts but it didn't have the right functions to do so.
I reckon that it's getting better at some point but come one, it's been 19 years since the release of CSS 1 and we are just getting some tools really dedicated to building layouts.
> I'm sorry, would you prefer it took 30? Is it not better that progress happens than not?
What about 5 years? It should have been enough to have some bricks to build columns, centering, grids, etc.
> The CSSWG is a glacial apparatus that create some of the worst bureaucratic bullshit I've ever seen...
I couldn't agreee more.
> but CSS itself isn't a bad tool.
If you thing a bloated presentation layer that have to be hacked to death to build presentation isn't a bad tool... well...
> Yes, programming for the web is hard. Programming is pretty much always hard, no matter how easy we make it because humans suck at long term planning. CSS is still leaps and bounds better than what we had, and makes a lot of things incredibly easy.
I don't know what CSS have to do with the eventual difficulty of programming. Actually it's easier to build a layout framework programmatically with JS, using a restricted features set from CSS and fixing the bad parts in code than to use CSS alone.
> Getting there? After 15+ years? We are talking about "centering" and "grids"! And still not there yet. This is just crazy.
No, this is what happens when multiple competitors have to agree on a complex evolving standard. Result: they all drag their feet one way or the other, each release breaks all sorts of stuff, and so on.
That's because interoperability with competitors is NOBODY'S PRIORITY when all actors are well-established (the youngest browser engine is khtml/webkit, started in 1998; seen any new engine recently? Didn't think so.). In fact, the largest the market-share, the greater the incentive to add more incompatibilities in order to keep your lock-in as strong as possible.
So yeah, CSS can be maddening, and in many ways it's not entirely succeeded (you mention mobile, that was quite a failure), but it wasn't because of problems with the standard itself, or at least not entirely.
