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Two decades ago I was overjoyed to discover that Scheme was finally going to have a useful application beyond illustrating SICP and writing koans to amuse mysel

Two decades ago I was overjoyed to discover that Scheme was finally going to have a useful application beyond illustrating SICP and writing koans to amuse myself, because DSSSL was on the cusp of evolving into the last document styling language anyone would ever need. Unfortunately following an incident with a broken Lisp machine, a liquid lunch, and an unlicensed particle accelerator, I became trapped in a parallel universe where the HTML ERB anointed CSS by mistake during a drunken night out in Oslo. The fundamental concept of CSS (best revealed by H.W.Lie's thesis IMO[1]) was to create a rich and versatile and non-Turing-complete set of structural selectors in lieu of DSSSL's recursive logic, and to allow styles to overlay one another; two design choices that only by the application of gallons of irony can explain why most web pages are composed of a bunch of nested DIV elements with hashed IDs and overloaded semantic class attributes, and everyone compiles their assets into a static file. I switched to Tailwind CSS months ago. Adam Wathan is the hero we deserve. [1] https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/css.pdf https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/css.pdf

blain_the_train 7y ago
Can you elaborate on what problem tailwind is solving? My first impression is that it looks like a set of custom built css classes.
- inopinatus 7y ago
  No, not custom at all. Quite the opposite - it's a well-curated set of standard classes. It's the focus on utility-based composition of style that sets Tailwind apart. For me the problem being solved is maintainability, recognising that CSS is tremendously brittle with regard to the application it serves and the context in which it is evaluated. Probably best to read https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-concerns/ https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-... which does a much better job of explaining the motivations, and the conceptual journey of its creator, than I ever could. Many folks (not all, but many, I'd even venture to say ... most) have a four step reaction to Tailwind: 1. That is the stupidest webdev idea I ever heard, and I've heard a lot. // 2. Fine, I'm trying it because everyone else keeps prompting me to and/or its creator seems competent. // 3. This is weird but actually quite helpful and totally not what I expected. // 4. You have ruined me for any other CSS framework and I never want to use anything else. All CSS is crap. Tailwind is (in my experience and opinion) the least crap and most productive approach yet.

blain_the_train 7y ago

Can you elaborate on what problem tailwind is solving? My first impression is that it looks like a set of custom built css classes.

inopinatus 7y ago
No, not custom at all. Quite the opposite - it's a well-curated set of standard classes. It's the focus on utility-based composition of style that sets Tailwind apart. For me the problem being solved is maintainability, recognising that CSS is tremendously brittle with regard to the application it serves and the context in which it is evaluated. Probably best to read https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-concerns/ https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-... which does a much better job of explaining the motivations, and the conceptual journey of its creator, than I ever could. Many folks (not all, but many, I'd even venture to say ... most) have a four step reaction to Tailwind: 1. That is the stupidest webdev idea I ever heard, and I've heard a lot. // 2. Fine, I'm trying it because everyone else keeps prompting me to and/or its creator seems competent. // 3. This is weird but actually quite helpful and totally not what I expected. // 4. You have ruined me for any other CSS framework and I never want to use anything else. All CSS is crap. Tailwind is (in my experience and opinion) the least crap and most productive approach yet.