When CSS Specificity Becomes Specialized Knowledge
Writing CSS is rarely a clean-slate exercise. Lara Schenck points to WordPress child themes as a prime example: developers almost inevitably end up wrestling with specificity, digging through theme stylesheets they didn't write, trying to identify which existing rule is blocking a new style — and then calculating the minimum amount of specificity required to override it. At that point, the thought creeps in: “Maybe it would be faster if I just wrote all of this myself.”
But Schenck’s underlying concern isn't child themes themselves, even though they serve as a perfect illustration of working primarily by overriding what's already there. The real issue is the expectation of knowledge placed on developers. Unless you identify as “a CSS person," understanding specificity and how it impacts a codebase over time is fairly specialized knowledge.
Should everyone who writes CSS be expected to internalize those details? Schenck suggests that as she gains more experience across different areas of development, she increasingly believes that's an unrealistic demand — given just how much other technical knowledge developers are already expected to hold.
