Structure matters more than syntax. Most arguments about code style are really arguments about structure in disguise — and knowing where to put the energy changes everything about how a system ages over time. The interesting work happens in the seam.
There is a particular kind of engineer who refuses to choose sides. They don't identify as a designer, but they care deeply about how things look. They don't call themselves architects, but they spend a lot of time thinking about how things hold together. They are drawn to the hard problems that live in between.
Being senior isn't about volume — of opinions, slides, or output. It's about precision.
The tyranny of the clean slate
Every new codebase begins with good intentions. The first few weeks are a kind of honeymoon period — everything is possible, nothing has accrued enough history to be annoying yet. The decisions you make during this window have an outsized effect on everything that follows.
The dangerous belief is that a clean slate means you can avoid all the mistakes that came before. You can't. What you can do is make different mistakes, hopefully more interesting ones, and learn from them faster.
What it means to stay close to the work
Staying close to the work is an act of discipline, not a sign of seniority deficit. The engineers who maintain the deepest context are often the ones who are most valuable in a crisis — not because they are the best debuggers, but because they understand the shape of the thing well enough to know where to look.
This is the other side of the tradeoff that rarely gets discussed. Abstraction is necessary. But abstraction has a cost, and that cost is measured in the distance it creates between you and the actual behavior of the system at runtime.
The reset exists at the start of every stylesheet. It is an act of editorial choice — a declaration of what you believe HTML should look like before a single class has been applied. Hairline is my answer to that question. One file. Honest defaults. Get out of the way.