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Tailwind made it possible for me (backend developer) to write somewhat maintainable frontend code. It’s a joy to use both as a writer and reader.

spoils19 5y ago
Speaking as a non-cargo culting developer, Tailwind is evil. It doesn’t understand CSS nor the document hierarchy it depends on, and almost every project that has had a frontend developer touch it has turned into an unmaintainable mess. Not to mention the tooling overhead. I had to revert countless JSP files due to strange compilation bugs that resulted in classes only sometimes(?) being added.
- nanna 5y ago
  > Speaking as a non-cargo culting developer Remember the HN comment guidelines? > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- aidos 5y ago
  It’s not traditional css and you need to accept that if you want to work with it. It has a load of benefits in a different dimension to css, and personally I think they’re worth the trade off. My main issue with it is the inability to control the order of precedence with the css rules. It’s mostly fine, but when you have runtime rules around, say, colouring text based on a few different variables, it turns into a bit of mess. Unfortunately because of the way it works there’s no way to implement “last rule wins” at runtime.
  - JasonCannon 5y ago
    I use tailwind with Angular, and we solve this with using [ngClass] to add/remove the class. You could do something similar with plain JS as well, and I imagine in most frameworks. Although yes, that is annoying to have to deal with.
    - aidos 5y ago
      That’s not quite it. Say you’re balancing a bunch of colours where it’s say mostly black, but you need to change to green in some case and red in others. In css this is easy because you can say “for this situation I want this colour”. And you can order your rules in a sensible way so the more specific cases trump the general ones. In tailwind you can’t do that because “text-red text-black” etc is ordered by the order in which the utility classes are added to the page. So you have to make sure you don’t add two conflicting classes. That case doesn’t seem so bad, but once you get a few different properties to control and a few different scenarios, it gets pretty messy.
runarberg 5y ago
There is a dead sibling comment which I will repeat with a bit kinder words, and with a different caveat. As a frontend developer I don’t like Tailwind for several reasons, it brings the styling into the structure. As a frontend developer Tailwind is at a forefront of what I would consider bad practice and encourages a code style which would be a nightmare for me to maintain. That said. Tailwind seems to be loved be people who are not professional frontend developers. It seems to be just the right tool for people who are not necessarily proficient in CSS. And perhaps people like me (and the dead sibling) need to learn to let go and allow other people to have the tools which makes it easier for them to do the job which they are not experts at. For that reason I understand Tailwind, even though I don’t agree with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lghh 5y ago
  I think TWCSS' argument is that we always were bringing the styling into the structure. Show me a site that has CSS Zen garden style replaceable stylesheets that totally overhaul the nature of the site. It's incredibly rare and almost always not worth the effort. What business says "I want to overhaul the styles of my application but change no structure at all. I'd posit it's near 0. Even if that's your goal, and I'd argue that it shouldn't be, you can still do that with TWCSS and the @apply keyword. You can write your generalized names then apply whatever twcss keywords you want to them separate from your document's structure. If your overhaul amounts to changing a "theme" you can easily do that with twcss. In fact, that's basically the point. I am a professional frontend developer and I love it.
- rekoros 5y ago
  I like Tailwind because it brings styling into structure. Dealing with external CSS has always been really challenging for me, and I've always heretically used inline CSS. I mean header files are OK, and professional C developers probably love them, but not having header files is kind of great too :)
- skipants 5y ago
  I think your comment has a lot of merit. Personally Tailwind has been awesome but I think it's because it makes all these abstractions for you. It also forces less experienced developers to follow this abstraction rather than making their own, which usually ends up as a ball of spaghetti. I have a similar comment elsewhere in the thread but it applies here too, I think: the main drawback of Tailwind is that it's extremely general. I'd imagine a well abstracted, focused, domain-specific set of CSS created by experienced frontend developers will be much better within that domain.

spoils19 5y ago

Speaking as a non-cargo culting developer, Tailwind is evil. It doesn’t understand CSS nor the document hierarchy it depends on, and almost every project that has had a frontend developer touch it has turned into an unmaintainable mess. Not to mention the tooling overhead. I had to revert countless JSP files due to strange compilation bugs that resulted in classes only sometimes(?) being added.

nanna 5y ago
> Speaking as a non-cargo culting developer Remember the HN comment guidelines? > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
aidos 5y ago
It’s not traditional css and you need to accept that if you want to work with it. It has a load of benefits in a different dimension to css, and personally I think they’re worth the trade off. My main issue with it is the inability to control the order of precedence with the css rules. It’s mostly fine, but when you have runtime rules around, say, colouring text based on a few different variables, it turns into a bit of mess. Unfortunately because of the way it works there’s no way to implement “last rule wins” at runtime.
- JasonCannon 5y ago
  I use tailwind with Angular, and we solve this with using [ngClass] to add/remove the class. You could do something similar with plain JS as well, and I imagine in most frameworks. Although yes, that is annoying to have to deal with.
  - aidos 5y ago
    That’s not quite it. Say you’re balancing a bunch of colours where it’s say mostly black, but you need to change to green in some case and red in others. In css this is easy because you can say “for this situation I want this colour”. And you can order your rules in a sensible way so the more specific cases trump the general ones. In tailwind you can’t do that because “text-red text-black” etc is ordered by the order in which the utility classes are added to the page. So you have to make sure you don’t add two conflicting classes. That case doesn’t seem so bad, but once you get a few different properties to control and a few different scenarios, it gets pretty messy.

runarberg 5y ago

There is a dead sibling comment which I will repeat with a bit kinder words, and with a different caveat. As a frontend developer I don’t like Tailwind for several reasons, it brings the styling into the structure. As a frontend developer Tailwind is at a forefront of what I would consider bad practice and encourages a code style which would be a nightmare for me to maintain. That said. Tailwind seems to be loved be people who are not professional frontend developers. It seems to be just the right tool for people who are not necessarily proficient in CSS. And perhaps people like me (and the dead sibling) need to learn to let go and allow other people to have the tools which makes it easier for them to do the job which they are not experts at. For that reason I understand Tailwind, even though I don’t agree with it.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lghh 5y ago
I think TWCSS' argument is that we always were bringing the styling into the structure. Show me a site that has CSS Zen garden style replaceable stylesheets that totally overhaul the nature of the site. It's incredibly rare and almost always not worth the effort. What business says "I want to overhaul the styles of my application but change no structure at all. I'd posit it's near 0. Even if that's your goal, and I'd argue that it shouldn't be, you can still do that with TWCSS and the @apply keyword. You can write your generalized names then apply whatever twcss keywords you want to them separate from your document's structure. If your overhaul amounts to changing a "theme" you can easily do that with twcss. In fact, that's basically the point. I am a professional frontend developer and I love it.
rekoros 5y ago
I like Tailwind because it brings styling into structure. Dealing with external CSS has always been really challenging for me, and I've always heretically used inline CSS. I mean header files are OK, and professional C developers probably love them, but not having header files is kind of great too :)
skipants 5y ago
I think your comment has a lot of merit. Personally Tailwind has been awesome but I think it's because it makes all these abstractions for you. It also forces less experienced developers to follow this abstraction rather than making their own, which usually ends up as a ball of spaghetti. I have a similar comment elsewhere in the thread but it applies here too, I think: the main drawback of Tailwind is that it's extremely general. I'd imagine a well abstracted, focused, domain-specific set of CSS created by experienced frontend developers will be much better within that domain.