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"I am fortunate to have only worked with Tailwind CSS in local sandboxes, and not in any production projects or on an actual team of other devs." Does anyone e

"I am fortunate to have only worked with Tailwind CSS in local sandboxes, and not in any production projects or on an actual team of other devs." Does anyone else get frustrated when people post blogs like this without actually using the technology in any meaningful way? I was also skeptical of Tailwind, and disliked it for the first 2 weeks or so of using it, but now I'm not so sure. This reminds me of the phenomenon in outdoor gear where 75% of the reviews are people who bought a tent and set it up in their backyard and for some reason deigned it necessary to write a review.

cultofmetatron 6y ago
so much this! I started tailwind not particularly liking it but intending only to use the grids which I did find really nice. It ended up taking over all of my css needs because it was so pleasant to use once you got into its way of working. And yes, I've handrolled my own and used bootstrap and bulma previously. Tailwind hits a sweetspot for me when I'm trying to knockout components fast.
graydsl 6y ago
We use it in production for about a year now. We never had any issues with tailwind or how the markup looks. In the end you put that into meaningful (react) components anyway.
johnfn 6y ago
Yeahhhh - I feel like if people had to qualify their opinions and comments on tech with in what capacity they've been working on it (professionally, personally, in 100 person organizations, 1000+, etc), then 90% of all internet arguments on this sort of thing would end before they even begun. ("I think all JS-related tech is stupid! Also my main exposure to it has been through looking at the Github page for React once..." oh boy.)
- zwily 6y ago
  I can’t tell if you’re for or against the idea, but you make it sound great. :)
corytheboyd 6y ago
I thought tailwind was a terrible idea when I first looked at it. Many months later, I tried it on a side project, and really didn't get it at first, thought after ~2 full days of working with it I felt very productive. The people who dismiss things without trying them will continue too I suppose, I just hope I don't end up having to work with them in a professional setting :P
- benatkin 6y ago
  It's better to reject a 3MB boilerplate CSS file out of hand. Some things are better left untried.
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    except that shows that you haven't used tailwind at all if you think it's a 3MB CSS file... it's literally a postprocessor that strips out all the unneeded styles from the palate before you ship it. much, much smaller than 3MB. https://tailwindcss.com/docs/optimizing-for-production https://tailwindcss.com/docs/optimizing-for-production
    - benatkin 6y ago
      I said I hadn't used it, so that is true. I have looked into it only briefly, but I understand the 3MB CSS file just fine. Yes, it's only in development, but it's still something I'd rather do without.
      - papertokyo 6y ago
        Dev mode on any kind of frontend framework sacrifices bundle size for developer productivity. I've never worked on a Tailwind project that ended up with a CSS file larger than 11kb in production for a whole website, and that's what ultimately matters.
      - corytheboyd 6y ago
        Why do you have to double down on this stance if you admit to having never seriously used it? Debug builds in any low level compiled language are also larger, because they include useful debugging runtimes, are you also against that? Sorry if I did not use the exactly right words to explain this, or if I too am just wrong about whatever you're talking about. Where does this anti-frontend-engineering madness end?
papertokyo 6y ago
I'm always heavily skeptical of anyone who has a take like this without actually trying it properly. It's basically: "I am fortunate to have barely scratched the surface of the tool, missed important details of how it works, and not used it in the situations where it becomes a lot more valuable." The first week or two of using Tailwind is indeed awkward and a bit frustrating, but after that it's like a switch clicks and 3x productivity is unlocked. Especially if other devs are working on the codebase, or will need to in the future.

cultofmetatron 6y ago

so much this! I started tailwind not particularly liking it but intending only to use the grids which I did find really nice. It ended up taking over all of my css needs because it was so pleasant to use once you got into its way of working. And yes, I've handrolled my own and used bootstrap and bulma previously. Tailwind hits a sweetspot for me when I'm trying to knockout components fast.

graydsl 6y ago

We use it in production for about a year now. We never had any issues with tailwind or how the markup looks. In the end you put that into meaningful (react) components anyway.

johnfn 6y ago

Yeahhhh - I feel like if people had to qualify their opinions and comments on tech with in what capacity they've been working on it (professionally, personally, in 100 person organizations, 1000+, etc), then 90% of all internet arguments on this sort of thing would end before they even begun. ("I think all JS-related tech is stupid! Also my main exposure to it has been through looking at the Github page for React once..." oh boy.)

zwily 6y ago
I can’t tell if you’re for or against the idea, but you make it sound great. :)

corytheboyd 6y ago

I thought tailwind was a terrible idea when I first looked at it. Many months later, I tried it on a side project, and really didn't get it at first, thought after ~2 full days of working with it I felt very productive. The people who dismiss things without trying them will continue too I suppose, I just hope I don't end up having to work with them in a professional setting :P

benatkin 6y ago
It's better to reject a 3MB boilerplate CSS file out of hand. Some things are better left untried.
- weaksauce 6y ago
  except that shows that you haven't used tailwind at all if you think it's a 3MB CSS file... it's literally a postprocessor that strips out all the unneeded styles from the palate before you ship it. much, much smaller than 3MB. https://tailwindcss.com/docs/optimizing-for-production https://tailwindcss.com/docs/optimizing-for-production
  - benatkin 6y ago
    I said I hadn't used it, so that is true. I have looked into it only briefly, but I understand the 3MB CSS file just fine. Yes, it's only in development, but it's still something I'd rather do without.
    - papertokyo 6y ago
      Dev mode on any kind of frontend framework sacrifices bundle size for developer productivity. I've never worked on a Tailwind project that ended up with a CSS file larger than 11kb in production for a whole website, and that's what ultimately matters.
    - corytheboyd 6y ago
      Why do you have to double down on this stance if you admit to having never seriously used it? Debug builds in any low level compiled language are also larger, because they include useful debugging runtimes, are you also against that? Sorry if I did not use the exactly right words to explain this, or if I too am just wrong about whatever you're talking about. Where does this anti-frontend-engineering madness end?

papertokyo 6y ago

I'm always heavily skeptical of anyone who has a take like this without actually trying it properly. It's basically: "I am fortunate to have barely scratched the surface of the tool, missed important details of how it works, and not used it in the situations where it becomes a lot more valuable." The first week or two of using Tailwind is indeed awkward and a bit frustrating, but after that it's like a switch clicks and 3x productivity is unlocked. Especially if other devs are working on the codebase, or will need to in the future.