What's wrong with HTML+CSS as a rendering primitive? It's quite successful in decoupling semantics from presentation, which is a requirement for a platform that's as widespread and universal as the modern web. JS is a bit crufty, but you don't have to deal with it. You could write everything in some other source language and compile down to JS/WASM. (Even low-level languages like C/C++/D/Rust can support this via Emscripten.)
The article is almost entirely about what's wrong with HTML+CSS -- the frustration over whether to use tables, floats, flexbox, grid, or whatever will come next (as one example of many).
HTML+CSS is a soup of overlapping technologies that has accumulated into this tangled ball of mismatched paradigms from nearly 30 years of "generational" improvements.
I grew up with it from the beginning so I understand the reasoning behind it all. But to someone wanting to learn it from scratch, trying to decipher tables vs. floats vs. flexboxes vs. grids must seem like utter madness -- a layout language written by a truly insane person.
