Comment by zarzavat

> I'm sure everyone has worked on sites where you're scared to make CSS file edits because the unpredictable ripple of changes might break unrelated pages.

CSS gives you multiple tools to solve this problem, if you don't use any of them then it's not really CSS's fault.

> Styling code near your semantic HTML tags doesn't get in the way

It does. When I'm working on functionality I don't want to see styles and vice versa. It adds a layer of noise that is not relevant.

If I'm making e.g. a search dropdown, I don't need to see any information about its cosmetic appearance. I do want to see information about how it functions.

Especially the other way around: if I'm styling the search dropdown I don't want to have to track down every JSX element in every sub-component. That's super tedious. All I need to know when I'm styling is the overall structure of the final element tree not of the vdom tree which could be considerably more complex.

> I've never seen a complex website redesign that didn't involve almost gutting the HTML either

Perhaps for a landing page. For a content-based website or web app you often want to adjust the design without touching your components.