What this article describes is no different than programming patterns in more traditional languages.
I legitimately can't think of anything that has made it more difficult to write by hand in the last 15 or so years; if anything it's never been easier! Building complex software is...complex, and frameworks and tools in the CSS world are no different than reaching for an MVC framework or ORM.
There's minor quirks between browsers, but it's a far cry from being platform-specific, and a huge improvement on the incompatibilities of yore.
Mirroring this sentiment. CSS is fantastic now and they've put a lot of careful attention into the new specifications. I haven't run into a situation in years where I was unable to lay something out the way I pictured it in my mock ups. We used to have to do a lot of hacking just to get simple things into layout in the mid to late 2000's.
I legitimately can't think of anything that has made it more difficult to write by hand in the last 15 or so years; if anything it's never been easier! Building complex software is...complex, and frameworks and tools in the CSS world are no different than reaching for an MVC framework or ORM.
There's minor quirks between browsers, but it's a far cry from being platform-specific, and a huge improvement on the incompatibilities of yore.