In that case I'd say the problem is exactly what you state
> knows essentially no CSS
The solution is quite obvious then too: learn some. It's not hard. Understanding the basics is a afternoon job. Diving a bit deeper a day, and learning about some often-used more in depth features like "responsive" or flexbox, another day. For a software developer/engineer that builds backends, CSS really isn't that hard.
That's not to say a basic CSS set and some explanation like in TLA, isn't useful.
It's my pet-peeve that in software development, I'm convinced we should understand the stuff that we work with. Not all, and certainly not everything in great detail, but enough to know where to find the info and details when working with it. From sysadmin to the concepts of cryptography and from accessibility to how an OS writes stuff to disk. Even if that means constantly learning.
That’s the whole point of this article. CSS is a huge language. Where do you even begin? This article is a perfect response to that very natural question.
There is no point to this article. This is the most common kind of trash you can find if you type in "minimum css"... it's not even that. Come on. Have integrity in your work and learn how to do it.
And this:
> but it's pretty much a bunch of pick-and-choose attributes for HTML that you can wrap up into "classes".
indicates despite using it for 25 years, you haven't even tried to learn it. This may have been partially true back when it was first introduced and all people knew were things like "font" and "[text-]align", but it's been a horribly inaccurate description of CSS for decades now.
Is this article not someone in the community documenting what's understood? I'm sorry if it doesn't meet your expectations, but it's fine for me.
Anyone making a personal website?
Just to like, follow up: 99% of the point of making your personal website is, like, making it fucking personal which is to say that you put your own time and energy into learning something in the process. Copy/pasting random CSS from the web is not learning. Also, copy/pasting this particular CSS is not even showing the slightest bit of interest.
So consider: Why would anyone care about your personal website if you don't care enough to learn how to make it, you know, personal by actually learning a tiny bit about the art you're trying to put into practice?
And none of this even starts to explain why this junk would be popular here. There are some brilliant CSS hacks in the wild that deserve attention, but this is sub-par even for child's play that might teach you how to do something useful. It's not even a lesson. It's just some crap you don't understand that you might copy and paste, with almost no explanation.