To a certain extent, I think this is true. Many mobile sites still need to be more engaging, but they need to do it by taking advantage of their strengths - server side rendering, a nice easy way to stylize (think CSS is bad? try styling your application in Android's framework, or WPF for that matter) - rather than going the route of the "SPA". Once a web app tries to look and feel like a native app, other things out of the web app developer's hands are going to make his app always look inferior. In fact, it may be some of those strengths I listed earlier.
Hmm what advantages do those have that makes you prefer them over CSS? I work in both of those daily and they're usually just an exercise in frustration.
They make more sense to my developer mind without designer background, don't suffer from CSS global namespace, inheritance side effects and browser specific behaviors.
Huh I also have a "developer" mind, and very few people would call me a designer, and those that do should re-think what a designer is.
However, from my observations over the years, the cost of "browser specific" behaviors is equal to or less than the cost of learning entirely new styling paradigms every time someone puts out a new UI framework. CSS also has the benefit that over time browser specific behaviors fade away as standards take shape, which is inherently not the case with UI frameworks.
As far as the namespace goes - I guess, but there is nothing to stop you from coming up with your own namespacing scheme using nested CSS classes.
