I didn’t say I did not spend time, I said - could not. Same applies for most people in the team. I think we had coupe folks who were spending a lot of their time explaining CSS.
My theory is that CSS was something that was treated as a task. Make a lot of client/server side development and then make these freaking lines align perfectly. So, most of time engineers were avoiding styles, applying them was the most tedious and hated part of the job.
I agree with you re: the task comment, there is a difference between JavaScript developers and Front End UI developers. It's almost like the full stack discussion but just in the front end ecosystem.
They significantly overlap, so wouldn't say they are different. I would suggest that most "JavaScript developers" in the box you'd put them in are backend developers that only know a minimal amount of JS and don't really know JS well and by extension the browser itself.
And these are the same types who take on JS tasks without really knowing JS (or the DOM), writing what is often layers of garbage JS with extensions, addons and jQuery in what could have been 5-10 lines of JS.
I don't claim to be an expert on the DOM, and I might be close to expert in JS itself... there's something to be said for knowing at least enough to know what is possible and what to look for BEFORE working around a problem and introducing a bunch of crap.
I am one of those that knows CSS well enough and still chooses JSS, as imho it's easier to coordinate a set of theme values and configuration across a project. IMHO react-jss and material-ui do things VERY right in terms of what works for not only components, but a larger project.
People not taking the time to learn is not a reason to throw an entire building block of the web out.
(Yes, I realize there are a lot of people who know CSS and still choose CSS-in-JS, but I'm specifically referencing the point re: not learning CSS.)