What is your experience with CSS, layout — did you start directly with React or was there a foundation in pure CSS/HTML?

My experience with CSS and layout started with learning pure HTML and CSS, which provided a solid foundation in understanding the box model, positioning, flexbox, and responsive design. This helped me better understand how styles are structured and how they affect page elements.

After that, I began using React, where styles can be written either in regular CSS files or with CSS-in-JS solutions. Knowledge of basic CSS helps in creating more flexible and maintainable components, as well as working efficiently with style libraries and preprocessors.