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This is why I don’t love Tailwind as much as I’d like: "It gives developers without a deep understanding of design the ability to build visually gorgeous, mode

This is why I don’t love Tailwind as much as I’d like: "It gives developers without a deep understanding of design the ability to build visually gorgeous, modern user interfaces." This is flat out a myth i widh people stop regurgitating. Look, unless you do css as your primary skill or really passionate about the more visual side of things (the "front of the frontend") then you don?t magically have the skills to use all kind of css layout te hniques to do precise and elegant UI, given the sketch / figma files. Heck most JS devs I’ve worked with barely understand how flex works. Best scenario they make somthing close to provided design, but not quite ... and crucially the finishing touches , the consistency , understanding of design principles that inform every layout you make is missing, so the end result is never quit3 what the designer provided with all kind of small but noticable imperfections like incorrect font sizes, une en spaces, missing white spaces, inconsistent vertical rhythm, relative sizes between icons and text etc etc. Yes, tailwind is good. As a standard utility framework it?s awesome but please stop prentending it turns JS devs magically into css/html experts.

sergiomattei 6y ago
Yeah, that's a weird point. Tailwind is CSS. Writing Tailwind classes is writing CSS.
dmitriid 6y ago
> stop prentending it turns JS devs magically into css/html experts. It doesn't turn them magically into experts. It gives them the tools to implement complex designs with relative ease, and it helps understand some deeper relationships and concepts in CSS. Speaking from own experience, YMMV and all that :)
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Not if they don't understand what those tools do or how to use them.
  - aniforprez 6y ago
    I mean what's there to understand with tailwind? It's a bunch of CSS classes. You want to add a shadow to a button and the "shadow-md" class. Same with a ton of other things like border radius, text colour, padding etc
    - robertoandred 6y ago
      It's not about understanding or not understanding tailwind, it's understanding the CSS that it's applying for you. Tailwind is just a shortcut, you still have to know where you're going and why.
- AltruisticGapHN 6y ago
  > It gives them the tools to implement complex designs with relative ease The actual scenario is backend / js / "fullstack" devs can copy/paste from many available tailwind "blocks" such as a login screen and it "just works". They didn’t have to wrangle css imports, sass syntax, fugure out dependencies and such. In that respect tailwind is awesome for majority of devs who work without designs and asked to implement gazillions of admins, dashboards, dialogs, etc. I fully understand their position and the success of tailwind in that respect. Using eg. bootstrap is already several levels of complexity higher due to understanding where to put the css classes, why they break when you change the html structure, how to fix them, etc. Typical js devs can modify css but often they will do a hackjob, making the css worse. It’s as if they don’t have appreciation for how complex css is and that principles of software architecture CAN also apply incss such as low/high coupling. Much better if they have to "only" edit a template, better for everyone involved i. a team unles. they have a dedicated css expert. On my last professional project I was able to use both Sass and tailwind.. but even to do that requires solid understanding of css selectors specificity, css best practices, because by default tailwind classes and custom css will compete. So in my experience whether it’s tailwind or Sass code, non-css developers aren’t any better off when they are stuck with layout issues. They still assign the issue to the css guy ;) PS : with all that said I am grateful to tailwind as well as bem and SuitCSS for making me appreciate more the needs of the other guys on my team. Writing css / tailwind that doesn’t break easily and is more maintainable that’s the art and what makes me still love the "front of the frontend". Learning to appreciate tailwind which I disliked at first made me, a css expert (and very proficient in js as well) a better overall developer.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    > The actual scenario is backend / js / "fullstack" devs can copy/paste from many available tailwind "blocks" such as a login screen and it "just works". It's that, but also something more. Tailwind blocks are exact opposite of black-boxes. You can clearly see everything they are made of, tweak it and experiment with it in a fully localized manner. CSS imports and SASS syntax are the least of the problems Tailwind solves (I don't actually think they are problems at all).
Vinnl 6y ago
"A deep understanding of design" there doesn't refer to understanding the tools of the trade (e.g. CSS), but rather on how to create a harmonious whole, e.g. by consistently applying paddings, colour scales, etc. Tailwind (and other constraint-based design systems, see [1]) can help with that. [1] https://styled-system.com/guides/why-powers-of-two/ https://styled-system.com/guides/why-powers-of-two/

sergiomattei 6y ago

Yeah, that's a weird point. Tailwind is CSS. Writing Tailwind classes is writing CSS.

dmitriid 6y ago

> stop prentending it turns JS devs magically into css/html experts. It doesn't turn them magically into experts. It gives them the tools to implement complex designs with relative ease, and it helps understand some deeper relationships and concepts in CSS. Speaking from own experience, YMMV and all that :)

robertoandred 6y ago
Not if they don't understand what those tools do or how to use them.
- aniforprez 6y ago
  I mean what's there to understand with tailwind? It's a bunch of CSS classes. You want to add a shadow to a button and the "shadow-md" class. Same with a ton of other things like border radius, text colour, padding etc
  - robertoandred 6y ago
    It's not about understanding or not understanding tailwind, it's understanding the CSS that it's applying for you. Tailwind is just a shortcut, you still have to know where you're going and why.
AltruisticGapHN 6y ago
> It gives them the tools to implement complex designs with relative ease The actual scenario is backend / js / "fullstack" devs can copy/paste from many available tailwind "blocks" such as a login screen and it "just works". They didn’t have to wrangle css imports, sass syntax, fugure out dependencies and such. In that respect tailwind is awesome for majority of devs who work without designs and asked to implement gazillions of admins, dashboards, dialogs, etc. I fully understand their position and the success of tailwind in that respect. Using eg. bootstrap is already several levels of complexity higher due to understanding where to put the css classes, why they break when you change the html structure, how to fix them, etc. Typical js devs can modify css but often they will do a hackjob, making the css worse. It’s as if they don’t have appreciation for how complex css is and that principles of software architecture CAN also apply incss such as low/high coupling. Much better if they have to "only" edit a template, better for everyone involved i. a team unles. they have a dedicated css expert. On my last professional project I was able to use both Sass and tailwind.. but even to do that requires solid understanding of css selectors specificity, css best practices, because by default tailwind classes and custom css will compete. So in my experience whether it’s tailwind or Sass code, non-css developers aren’t any better off when they are stuck with layout issues. They still assign the issue to the css guy ;) PS : with all that said I am grateful to tailwind as well as bem and SuitCSS for making me appreciate more the needs of the other guys on my team. Writing css / tailwind that doesn’t break easily and is more maintainable that’s the art and what makes me still love the "front of the frontend". Learning to appreciate tailwind which I disliked at first made me, a css expert (and very proficient in js as well) a better overall developer.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  > The actual scenario is backend / js / "fullstack" devs can copy/paste from many available tailwind "blocks" such as a login screen and it "just works". It's that, but also something more. Tailwind blocks are exact opposite of black-boxes. You can clearly see everything they are made of, tweak it and experiment with it in a fully localized manner. CSS imports and SASS syntax are the least of the problems Tailwind solves (I don't actually think they are problems at all).

Vinnl 6y ago

"A deep understanding of design" there doesn't refer to understanding the tools of the trade (e.g. CSS), but rather on how to create a harmonious whole, e.g. by consistently applying paddings, colour scales, etc. Tailwind (and other constraint-based design systems, see [1]) can help with that. [1] https://styled-system.com/guides/why-powers-of-two/ https://styled-system.com/guides/why-powers-of-two/