How hard is it to master semantic markup and good CSS?

Question

I know this won't be a popular question, because a lot of web designers want to assume that their craft is difficult and valuable.

IT IS. But I do not believe that it is difficult because HTML and CSS are difficult to master, I believe its difficult because being a good creative designer is difficult. Please resist the urge to reflexively disagree with me because I consider the language simple.

I suck as a designer, thankfully its not my job. However I can take a photo shopped comp and create a pure HTML/CSS web page from it with ease.

It is my personal believe that anyone can become an effective HTML/CSS guru in a week or two's study. There just isn't that much complexity (and this is someone with years of experience talking).

Crossbrowser coding is not as hard as people make it sound. I develop in Firefox, and tweak for IE, and I'm done, a good CSS reset handles 99% of the issues.

Do you disagree with this? Is HTML and CSS impossible to learn well in a week?

EDIT: This has to do with my heavily downvoted answer here: Testing HTML/CSS/Javascript skills when hiring

Answer 1

"Is HTML and CSS impossible to learn well in a week?"

In a word, yes.

Can you write a basic page by following something like, "Learn html in 24 hours"? Absolutely. Will you know why it does or does not work - probably not.

"...a good CSS reset handles 99% of the issues." Possibly. Why it does is likely way beyond one week of study.

• Finding a generic CSS reset that handles 99% of issues - free
• Handling the other 1% - priceless!