There are bunch of good UX principles baked into HTML and CSS. Plus to become good at HTML and CSS you will be exposed to a lot of UX talk as well.

So one could argue it's really hard to get really good at HTML and CSS and not care about UX at all.

But yes, a fool with a tool is still a fool - if that's the point you're trying to make.

Not directly making that point.

Just that a lot of programmers aren't necessarily known for their design aesthetic.

So you could 'not be a fool', and be very good at HTML/CSS, and yet not really understand or care about color, flow, layout.

But, to your point, surely they will absorb something in the process. But it is far from a given.

Isn't this the entire argument between Apple-Microsoft, Jobs-Gates?

Gates isn't a fool, neither are MS programmers, but they aren't known for good 'ux designs'

There are a lot more technology experts than good Design experts.

> Isn't HTML and CSS a base line, every programmer knows this?

Yes, it isn't a baseline. I'm talking about what is, not what should be. In some (large) circles using HTML or CSS is regarded akin to writing machine instructions rather than python. It should be avoided because no one understands it and you'll create a maintenance problem.

Wow. I wonder who are those people in those circles. They clearly have no clue about frontend development, because a decent abstraction layer on top of those “low-level” instructions has never materialized. 100% of frameworks and renderers do leak abstraction and you have to deal with HTML and CSS anyway at some point.

It seems building SPAs and using related frameworks unnecessarily is now the baseline. People who really know HTML and CSS are few and far between. Many are just copy-pasting.