We use CSS to drive the presentation of our web experiences but all too often we hit a wall of complexity and maintainability much earlier than we had hoped. We use frameworks and opinions to try to mitigate and wrangle this complexity, but understanding why this happens can help prevent us from hitting that wall at all.

In reality, CSS addresses two very different concerns. One is decoration, the other is layout. Conflating these two concerns is the source of almost all our CSS woes. Understanding them is the path to transcendence.