I was hoping this was addressed in the article, and it was, under "Why use margin and not gap?" A number of arguments are presented (including that, at the time, it wasn't an option) and the confluence of those make the owl compelling.

I think I'd probably opt to buy into flexbox/grids and gap for greenfields projects, but I do appreciate the notion of flow axioms and styling the space between adjacent items.

Absolutely. You can usually drop the direction though as it's the initial value. But flex is so powerful for layouts, I'll slap it on almost anything, and barely have a need for grid.

You can now even use `gap` on flexbox.

agreed. grid & flex, combined with a standard set of custom spacing/gap utils for your design system are making life so easy when trying to build coherent layouts.

This immediately made me think of Dave Matthews Band...