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Difficulty in CSS Frameworks
Exploring the Complexity Behind Popular CSS Frameworks — and Why Picking One Isn’t Always Easy
Truth be told, there are so many ways CSS tools that struggle to find that perfect balance between easy, DX friendly and they are sometimes blatantly frustrating.
Ideally, your solution should land right in the middle there, next to CSS Modules.
But where this all gets muddled up is with the addition of CSS-in-JS, theming variables, custom variables, preprocessors.
It gets really messy when you start examining what’s fair, what’s BS, what should be easier, what should be customizable.
There are so many variables and it’s largely subjective to each developer’s skill level, that…
I don’t even know where to begin with this article.
How about Bootstrap? One of my first loves in frontend development. It offers you a nice set of defaults.
Which, if you’re a grown-a** developer in 2025 still using Bootstrap, you need to cross “Blazingly Fast” and “Modern” from your CV. Let’s be real!
Now, coding on VS Code with 900 extensions and a light mode so aggressive it damages my retinas, I could just barely, after about 700 styles overrides, barely squeeze my way through a decent landing page.
