CSS Is More Than Styling: Why the Web’s Most Underrated Language Matters

CSS stands for “Cascading Style Sheets.” It controls colors and fonts, borders and shadows, rows and columns, animations and transitions—in short, the visual language of the web. CSS is what makes websites look beautiful—or, in many cases, pretty ugly. It is also what makes this page look like WIRED.

After that paragraph, some readers will already be objecting to the idea that CSS is a programming language. “It’s a style sheet,” they might say. “The second S stands for ‘sheet.’” Others will point out that CSS is a domain-specific language rather than a general-purpose one, or that it is not Turing-complete. They are not entirely wrong. CSS is different from many other programming languages: There is no traditional compilation step, and errors are not typically thrown at runtime. But those differences do not make CSS unimportant—or even disqualify it as a language used for programming.

CSS Is Easy to Start, but Difficult to Master

The gatekeeping around whether CSS is a “real” programming language may exist partly because it is so easy to begin using. Anyone can understand what background: red; does. But simple does not mean easy, as programmer and writer Jeremy Keith has observed. If you work with CSS, you have probably grown tired of people calling it easy or trivial.

The first CSS specification, released in 1996, included about 50 properties, such as color and font-size. Today, there are at least 10 times as many. CSS has changed dramatically over three decades, and becoming competent with it requires understanding a large and evolving system.

The language is also capable of far more than basic visual styling. One programmer recreated Doom with CSS. Other projects have created holographic Pokémon cards and a 3D rendering engine.

At the March MadCSS Tournament, Cassidy Williams built an experimental database query engine entirely in CSS. When she demonstrated it at Microsoft Build, even the host—a veteran programmer—seemed to dismiss CSS. “You’re one of those people who likes it,” they sneered. “Maybe it’s just you.”

Why CSS Is Treated as Decoration

Why do so few programmers recognize the name of CSS creator Håkon Wium Lie, while the story of JavaScript’s creation is widely known? Brendan Eich, Netscape, and the famous 10-day development timeline have become part of programming folklore. Lie, by contrast, is less well known. He is Norwegian rather than an American Silicon Valley figure like Eich or a British technology icon like HTML inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript each have different responsibilities in the browser. Yet CSS is often treated as little more than decoration—as if styling were somehow less technical than structure or behavior. Visual design is not merely ornamental. CSS affects readability, hierarchy, interaction, and the richness of the experience people have on the web. People care about how things look, and that affects how they use websites.

The Gendered Dismissal of Front-End Development

There is another, uglier explanation for CSS’s neglect: It is sometimes treated as a “feminine” language. CSS developers work on the front end, the part of a website people can actually see. Alongside jokes about “style sheet weirdos,” there is a clear undertone that style and beauty are women’s work.

The consequences of dismissing CSS and front-end development extend far beyond hurt feelings. They influence programmers’ salaries, the skills companies seek and test in job interviews, and how seriously teams take accessible web design. When visual design and accessibility are treated as secondary concerns, the people who depend on those parts of the web can be affected most.

Respecting CSS Means Respecting Front-End Expertise

Recently, I discussed this with a talented backend engineer. During college, she interned at a reputable software company in San Francisco, working entirely on the backend. “I’ve never been interested in the front end at all—almost to the extreme,” she told me. “I don’t like front-end.”

Even so, when she joined the company full-time after graduation, she was immediately assigned to a front-end role. She eventually returned to backend engineering and has since become accustomed to the skepticism. “I’ve had a million conversations with a classic engineer who doesn’t think I know what I’m talking about until he’s worked with me for six months and sees my first backend project.”

CSS may begin with a single declaration such as background: red;, but the language has grown into a powerful system that shapes how the web looks, feels, and works. Calling it “just styling” overlooks both its technical complexity and its importance to everyone who uses the internet.