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I evaluated Bullet Train last year when building an MVP for a client. Ended up using Jump Start Rails instead. Main reasons: 1. The hybrid approach to iOS an

I evaluated Bullet Train last year when building an MVP for a client. Ended up using Jump Start Rails instead. Main reasons: 1. The hybrid approach to iOS and Android apps with JSR were better than what BT had to offer 2. There was a lot less to learn about the mental model of how JSR was built via Bullet Train. It was basically pay, pull down, configure, and get going with JSR. BT has things like SuperScaffolding, an abstraction layer on CanCanCan, etc. I didn't want to have to ramp up on those to decide whether they were better than the alternatives. YMMV of course. JSR is a paid app and IIRC BT was at the time too... but looks like maybe not anymore?

andrei_says_ 3y ago
Did you end up using tailwind with jump start rails? Any way around it? I like the idea of jump start rails but would like to stay away from tailwindcss.
- minton 3y ago
  I’ve only heard good things about tailwind. Did you have a bad experience with it?
  - osxman 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - nawgz 3y ago
    That's the nature of how these things go. People that like Tailwind praise it. People that think it's fundamentally bad design avoid it and don't say too much, or are drowned out by the people praising it. People who just write SCSS don't even think about it.
    - tough 3y ago
      Companies like tailwind Engineers learn to work with it due to that simple fact. It's OK tbh, and it's easily interoperable between stacks so not really hard to pick up and useful if your project already uses it. I tried to fight it at first, but I've only seen it being used more and more. Why fight the stream if there's no good reason for it?
      - lowercased 3y ago
        > Why fight the stream if there's no good reason for it? Why jump tool chains when you already have more than enough on your plate to keep up with? I watched a conference presentation last week from a front-end person who talked about FE design. He pulled up a slide on bootstrap and said "if you use bootstrap, everything will end up looking like twitter. your login page won't be able to be creative, you'll just look like every other login page". I had to push back at the end of the presentation with some BS support. I don't use it much any more, but the obvious misinformation about bootstrap continues in 2023, and it's bothersome. FWIW, the presenter said "oh yeah, you're right, and it can be used well, but some people just use the defaults". Separately, my experiences with tailwind have been less than exciting. Perhaps if I spent the $300+ on 'premium tailwind components' I'd be more on board? > easily interoperable between stacks so not really hard to pick up and useful if your project already uses it. And if I don't use it? I get a fair amount of pushback from colleagues sometimes for not jumping on the 'newest' things. Spoiler: I don't deploy many projects with docker either. Is that 'fighting' it? Or just using other established/tested/documented tools and proceses to get a job done?
        cutler 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - schappim 3y ago
      >> "fundamentally bad design" They literally wrote the book on good design[1] [1] https://www.refactoringui.com/ https://www.refactoringui.com/
      - nawgz 3y ago
        No, that's not true; a 2023 book giving advice like "don't use borders" is definitely not in any way a seminal source of "good design". Besides, I'm not saying I think it's a fundamentally bad design, I'm saying those voices are drowned out by the people on-board with it - for a great example, consider how you just came into the conversation, squished the nuance I was discussing, and gave hyperbolic praise to their book just because you like their tool.
        andrei_says_ 3y ago
        Exactly. Millions of engineers are now more empowered to make design decisions - and given more convenient tools. The price - ignoring how CSS was designed to work, unreadable mess of classes in the markup, a bootstrap-like cookie cut approach to everything, and yes, the color purple.
      - TestingUser123 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - andrei_says_ 3y ago
        The book included some useful rules for people new to interaction design. These can be applied without the use of tailwindcss. Use of the framework tailwindcss has nothing to do with the book. The framework itself goes against the intended use of css. It ignores the power of the cascade and leads to a pile of incomprehensible
      - andrei_says_ 3y ago
        The book included some useful rules for people new to interaction design. These can be applied without the use of tailwindcss. Use of the framework tailwindcss has nothing to do with the book. The framework itself goes against the intended use of css. It ignores the power of the cascade and leads to a pile of incomprehensible css repeated over and over again. It is convenient and unreadable at the same time. Handy if you don’t want to learn css and use it properly and completely unacceptable if you do.
    - andrei_says_ 3y ago
      I am the people who just write scss. For an app I may use bootstrap as it is a framework with bigger blocks.
    - cutler 3y ago
      Tailwind is an abomination. There, I've said it.
- thih9 3y ago
  Why? Note, Bullet Train also uses tailwind.
  - aculver 3y ago
    Yes, this is true that we lean heavily into Tailwind CSS by default. However, when I implemented our "new" component system in 2021, I designed it so that there was a path forward for Bullet Train on vanilla CSS or Bootstrap if anyone wanted to implement it. I don't have any plans to do it myself, but people (including Tamik, the original theme author for Bullet Train) have expressed an interest. I'd love to see it happen. You can get a sense for how this would be possible from our theme docs at https://bullettrain.co/docs/themes https://bullettrain.co/docs/themes.
- jonwinstanley 3y ago
  Have you tried it on a real project? Tailwind is a huge time saver when compared to traditional CSS or SASS.
  - nawgz 3y ago
    What I really think you're saying is that Tailwind is a huge time saver when it comes to design, and compared to your past experiences translating designs to CSS it felt like a net win. A lot of people disagree with Tailwind's design philosophy on both the developer and consumer side of the code (i.e. DX and UI), so it's questionable what "real project" and "time saver" really mean; ironically, I question that your definition of "real project" even included a team with design chops.
    - thih9 3y ago
      > ironically, I question that your definition of "real project" even included a team with design chops “No, you have never worked on a real project!” :) Both can be real projects, without quotation marks. I’m constantly surprised that there are so many different ways and processes to build a website; and people who think theirs is the best.
      - nawgz 3y ago
        Indeed, personally I would never open a conversation with that, but I believe this is someone gussying up their personal hobby project where they learned how to use a CSS framework into a "real project" while they denigrate someone else. If we're going to discard some projects as real, a pretty easy filter is "were multiple people required to build it". People who need Tailwind to provide their design system like Tailwind, but they are usually working on very small-scale projects they're unlikely to maintain and upgrade like a project with real users, real design, and multiple engineers would. And a pretty easy proxy for the latter type of shop is "do you have people who aren't even front-end engineers doing your design", and that commenter was displaying all those signals to me.
        3y ago
schappim 3y ago
At the time, JSP was more cost-effective than Bullet Train, and the early adoption of Tailwind was also significant.

andrei_says_ 3y ago

Did you end up using tailwind with jump start rails? Any way around it? I like the idea of jump start rails but would like to stay away from tailwindcss.

minton 3y ago
I’ve only heard good things about tailwind. Did you have a bad experience with it?
- osxman 3y ago
  [flagged]
- nawgz 3y ago
  That's the nature of how these things go. People that like Tailwind praise it. People that think it's fundamentally bad design avoid it and don't say too much, or are drowned out by the people praising it. People who just write SCSS don't even think about it.
  - tough 3y ago
    Companies like tailwind Engineers learn to work with it due to that simple fact. It's OK tbh, and it's easily interoperable between stacks so not really hard to pick up and useful if your project already uses it. I tried to fight it at first, but I've only seen it being used more and more. Why fight the stream if there's no good reason for it?
    - lowercased 3y ago
      > Why fight the stream if there's no good reason for it? Why jump tool chains when you already have more than enough on your plate to keep up with? I watched a conference presentation last week from a front-end person who talked about FE design. He pulled up a slide on bootstrap and said "if you use bootstrap, everything will end up looking like twitter. your login page won't be able to be creative, you'll just look like every other login page". I had to push back at the end of the presentation with some BS support. I don't use it much any more, but the obvious misinformation about bootstrap continues in 2023, and it's bothersome. FWIW, the presenter said "oh yeah, you're right, and it can be used well, but some people just use the defaults". Separately, my experiences with tailwind have been less than exciting. Perhaps if I spent the $300+ on 'premium tailwind components' I'd be more on board? > easily interoperable between stacks so not really hard to pick up and useful if your project already uses it. And if I don't use it? I get a fair amount of pushback from colleagues sometimes for not jumping on the 'newest' things. Spoiler: I don't deploy many projects with docker either. Is that 'fighting' it? Or just using other established/tested/documented tools and proceses to get a job done?
      - cutler 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - schappim 3y ago
    >> "fundamentally bad design" They literally wrote the book on good design[1] [1] https://www.refactoringui.com/ https://www.refactoringui.com/
    - nawgz 3y ago
      No, that's not true; a 2023 book giving advice like "don't use borders" is definitely not in any way a seminal source of "good design". Besides, I'm not saying I think it's a fundamentally bad design, I'm saying those voices are drowned out by the people on-board with it - for a great example, consider how you just came into the conversation, squished the nuance I was discussing, and gave hyperbolic praise to their book just because you like their tool.
      - andrei_says_ 3y ago
        Exactly. Millions of engineers are now more empowered to make design decisions - and given more convenient tools. The price - ignoring how CSS was designed to work, unreadable mess of classes in the markup, a bootstrap-like cookie cut approach to everything, and yes, the color purple.
    - TestingUser123 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - andrei_says_ 3y ago
      The book included some useful rules for people new to interaction design. These can be applied without the use of tailwindcss. Use of the framework tailwindcss has nothing to do with the book. The framework itself goes against the intended use of css. It ignores the power of the cascade and leads to a pile of incomprehensible
    - andrei_says_ 3y ago
      The book included some useful rules for people new to interaction design. These can be applied without the use of tailwindcss. Use of the framework tailwindcss has nothing to do with the book. The framework itself goes against the intended use of css. It ignores the power of the cascade and leads to a pile of incomprehensible css repeated over and over again. It is convenient and unreadable at the same time. Handy if you don’t want to learn css and use it properly and completely unacceptable if you do.
  - andrei_says_ 3y ago
    I am the people who just write scss. For an app I may use bootstrap as it is a framework with bigger blocks.
  - cutler 3y ago
    Tailwind is an abomination. There, I've said it.
thih9 3y ago
Why? Note, Bullet Train also uses tailwind.
- aculver 3y ago
  Yes, this is true that we lean heavily into Tailwind CSS by default. However, when I implemented our "new" component system in 2021, I designed it so that there was a path forward for Bullet Train on vanilla CSS or Bootstrap if anyone wanted to implement it. I don't have any plans to do it myself, but people (including Tamik, the original theme author for Bullet Train) have expressed an interest. I'd love to see it happen. You can get a sense for how this would be possible from our theme docs at https://bullettrain.co/docs/themes https://bullettrain.co/docs/themes.
jonwinstanley 3y ago
Have you tried it on a real project? Tailwind is a huge time saver when compared to traditional CSS or SASS.
- nawgz 3y ago
  What I really think you're saying is that Tailwind is a huge time saver when it comes to design, and compared to your past experiences translating designs to CSS it felt like a net win. A lot of people disagree with Tailwind's design philosophy on both the developer and consumer side of the code (i.e. DX and UI), so it's questionable what "real project" and "time saver" really mean; ironically, I question that your definition of "real project" even included a team with design chops.
  - thih9 3y ago
    > ironically, I question that your definition of "real project" even included a team with design chops “No, you have never worked on a real project!” :) Both can be real projects, without quotation marks. I’m constantly surprised that there are so many different ways and processes to build a website; and people who think theirs is the best.
    - nawgz 3y ago
      Indeed, personally I would never open a conversation with that, but I believe this is someone gussying up their personal hobby project where they learned how to use a CSS framework into a "real project" while they denigrate someone else. If we're going to discard some projects as real, a pretty easy filter is "were multiple people required to build it". People who need Tailwind to provide their design system like Tailwind, but they are usually working on very small-scale projects they're unlikely to maintain and upgrade like a project with real users, real design, and multiple engineers would. And a pretty easy proxy for the latter type of shop is "do you have people who aren't even front-end engineers doing your design", and that commenter was displaying all those signals to me.
      - 3y ago

schappim 3y ago

At the time, JSP was more cost-effective than Bullet Train, and the early adoption of Tailwind was also significant.