First screen, captured 5 days ago.

The Future of CSS

What HN thinks

A CSS article becomes a referendum on React, Tailwind, date pickers, world hunger and the corporate conspiracy behind squircles.

Modern vanilla CSS is genuinely great
Many say flexbox, grid, nesting, :has(), layers and variables have made plain HTML/CSS a joy and let them delete lots of JavaScript.
Reactivity still needs a framework
A long subthread argues whether state management can be done in vanilla JS; some say you end up rebuilding React, others say a small custom solution or HTMX suffices.
New features are gimmicks or bloat
Critics see corner shapes and CSS functions as feature creep while basics like date pickers, tooltips and on-screen keyboard handling remain poor, with some suspecting vendors keep the web complex deliberately.

Consensus: No real consensus, though most agree modern CSS layout tools are a big improvement over the old hack-filled days.

Recommended in the comments

htmx (library): Suggested as enough interactivity for typical CRUD apps without an SPA framework.
Svelte (library): Named as a faster, less fragile alternative to React's virtual DOM approach.
Lit (library): Offered as a light option for reactivity near vanilla JS.
Emotion (library): One commenter found its styled-components mental model made CSS click.
Layoutit Grid ↗ (tool): Suggested for visually generating side-by-side flexible layouts.
You Don't Need JavaScript ↗ (book): Its author offered it as a guide to doing things like accordions and progress bars without JS.