Honestly, the separation of concerns movement where content writers do HTML, designers do CSS and programmers do Javascript, all with with minimal overlap, set web development back a good 10 years. React was a wake up call that the three are intertwined so closely that you cannot think about them in isolation.

One of the early criticisms of React was: “You can’t do HTML in Javascript. You shouldn’t be styling in JS! That violates the separation of concerns.” React skyrocketed productivity and allowed scaling without spaghetti. That’s why it won.

CSSZenGarden was fun, but how many companies seriously did redesigns by just swapping a style sheet? Only repeat the dogma if it makes sense....