What is better: CSS hacks or browser detection?

Question

Commonly when I look around the Internet, I find that people are generally using CSS hacks to make their website look the same in all browsers. Personally, I have found this

Answer 1

Listen to your code! Kent Beck says it. And in Wing-Tsun they say: be like the water that bends! Or something.

Look, here's a CSS Hack to get IE5 to understand html5: http://blog.whatwg.org/styling-ie-noscript.

And here's the same using JS: http://blog.whatwg.org/supporting-new-elements-in-ie.

Compare 5 pages of hack explanation with 5 lines of well-understandable code. So, use JS.

Things have their benefits and their downsides. And your understanding of the matter and the elegance of the actual code lead the way.