Isn't there some presumed universal convention for how to index things, present in the most popular programming languages, that avoid all of these issues that would have really easy to code?

I feel like I'm spending my time doing the wrong things ... I should have been arguing for sensibility during the standards writing. These modern css things are only here to make things easier, not more wonky and strange - we already have that. If they're just dedicated to inventing new bizarreness to replace the older wackiness, where have we actually come?