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I would add this. If anyone familiar with how Tailwind works lands on a new project, regardless of its age, this person can immediately understand the front-en

I would add this. If anyone familiar with how Tailwind works lands on a new project, regardless of its age, this person can immediately understand the front-end code in a matter of seconds, without having to look through thousands of lines of code in a separate CSS folder. I don't understand why Tailwind is "harder to read", as the OP wrote. It makes it much easier to read as what the code does is immediately understandable.

Spivak 6y ago
I think it's because Tailwind is forced via a mountain of historical baggage to shove it's entire UI in-between two quotes with a tiny (practical) character limit when you might really like some tooling (IDE collapse, expand, summarize, tag) and some browser support (dynamically compiled styles).
Macha 6y ago
Some people consider tailwind/inline styles to be easier to read because it's all right there in the file. Others view compartmentalisation as important to ease of reading, letting them focus on one level at a time. I wonder how well the preferences for tailwind align with people's views on unit tests in the same source file?
tshaddox 6y ago
Using Tailwind does probably establish a floor on the difficulty of quickly diving into a new project (assuming the Tailwind config hasn't been customized too much). That might be great if you're in the position to force your team to switch from unstructured/undisciplined CSS to Tailwind, but not in a position to force your team to use some even more structured approach that supports even better consistency and composability (like a set of components). Granted, Tailwind is probably intended to be used to create a set of components, although a lot of their official messaging (like Tailwind UI) seems to actively work against that approach.
AltruisticGapHN 6y ago
That is simply untrue. Tailwind is great, but someone who isn’t proficient in creating css layouts is not going to magically understand the same layout with tailwind classes. I had to eg. fix a stacking context issue (z-index) a so called full stack dev could not solve. Basic css technique. For someone creating layouts from scratch tw is very verbose and templates can become difficult to reason through while you develop them. Easy to disregard for devs who just jump in a ready made template and make smaller changes.

Spivak 6y ago

I think it's because Tailwind is forced via a mountain of historical baggage to shove it's entire UI in-between two quotes with a tiny (practical) character limit when you might really like some tooling (IDE collapse, expand, summarize, tag) and some browser support (dynamically compiled styles).

Macha 6y ago

Some people consider tailwind/inline styles to be easier to read because it's all right there in the file. Others view compartmentalisation as important to ease of reading, letting them focus on one level at a time. I wonder how well the preferences for tailwind align with people's views on unit tests in the same source file?

tshaddox 6y ago

Using Tailwind does probably establish a floor on the difficulty of quickly diving into a new project (assuming the Tailwind config hasn't been customized too much). That might be great if you're in the position to force your team to switch from unstructured/undisciplined CSS to Tailwind, but not in a position to force your team to use some even more structured approach that supports even better consistency and composability (like a set of components). Granted, Tailwind is probably intended to be used to create a set of components, although a lot of their official messaging (like Tailwind UI) seems to actively work against that approach.

AltruisticGapHN 6y ago

That is simply untrue. Tailwind is great, but someone who isn’t proficient in creating css layouts is not going to magically understand the same layout with tailwind classes. I had to eg. fix a stacking context issue (z-index) a so called full stack dev could not solve. Basic css technique. For someone creating layouts from scratch tw is very verbose and templates can become difficult to reason through while you develop them. Easy to disregard for devs who just jump in a ready made template and make smaller changes.