Hire HTML and CSS People

I don't get it.

I know CSS quite well, as I've been working with it over 15 years. I've been surprised that new programmers hardly know it at all, and heavily lean on component libraries or css frameworks.

Can see why though, css has become very large and complex, and it's only getting worse.

The upside is that my simple fixes sometimes seem like a superpower to others.

> Isn't HTML and CSS a base line, every programmer knows this?

Yes, it isn't a baseline. I'm talking about what is, not what should be. In some (large) circles using HTML or CSS is regarded akin to writing machine instructions rather than python. It should be avoided because no one understands it and you'll create a maintenance problem.

This has nothing to do with HTML or CSS vs any other language of the web. It should be "Prioritize frontend usability and design." For that you need good UX/UI people, who may or may not know HTML or CSS. It doesn't matter.

Any competent frontend dev can copy a good Figma, but not every HTML/CSS/Tailwind/JS dev can make a pretty, usable, accessible website.

If you think about your frontend primarily in terms of how "vanilla" to go... then you're writing a website by engineers, for engineers. It might have pretty source, but that doesn't in any way guarantee good usability or design. Regular users never see your source and don't care about it, but they will definitely see your UX work (or lack thereof).

You can't hire what you can't find (at your budget), so if you agree with the principle the imperative becomes 'teach html & css', and try to explain to the students why the guy next to him on react is already three projects ahead and has two 'native' apps to boot.