I think we picked up a lot more of the basics back in the days because doing CSS was much less forgiving than it is now. And the whole struggle with pixel perfect between browsers just forced you to spend hours on these tiny things.

I was also waaay more limited. All those clever hacks to get equal height columns, "sliding doors", workarounds for IE5/6/7…

Yep, for sure! It was a fun ride but I'm happy it's over, though I don't enjoy CSS the same these days. Could be age and all that, who knows.

Same here (but started in 2000), except I didn't know about the ch unit. OP likely has some great soft skills and negotiation prowess.