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Gray beard's 5c: Tailwind is a farce and a catastrophe. It's as modern as the style parameter is, and it's as reusable as a moving a dirt pile from one corner

by keyle 3y ago

Gray beard's 5c: Tailwind is a farce and a catastrophe. It's as modern as the style parameter is, and it's as reusable as a moving a dirt pile from one corner to the next. You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. Learn CSS, that will stick with you for the next 20 years. It amuses me when a library is implemented 'with tailwind', which means it's totally useless to the people _not using tailwind_, and excruciating to clean up. Go ahead, downvote me to hell, I'll see you in 5 years.

nisegami 3y ago
>You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. Learn CSS, that will stick with you for the next 20 years. Tailwind maps onto CSS in a very straightforward way. I think you'd have to go out of your way to "learn Tailwind" without also improving your knowledge of CSS.
- mablopoule 3y ago
  Except for the whole "Cascading" part. I think I understand tailwind, but like the parent poster I'm really not a fan, because while CSS can be a footgun, it can also be quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors.
  - paleite 3y ago
    i think that’s what people’s argument FOR tailwind is: CSS can easily be a footgun, unless everyone on the team uses a sane DOM structure, CSS variables and well thought out CSS selectors. i’ve yet to witness a project without “!important” scattered throughout the codebase.
    - broast 3y ago
      That's sad to hear. Good CSS with an intuitive DOM structure is simple to achieve yet so powerful. Hate to see devs give up that power.
      - nisegami 3y ago
        Complex solutions are much, much easier than simple solutions.
        yurishimo 3y ago
        Exactly this. Anyone who has worked with a junior developer understands this intuitively. They spend a week smashing their head against the desk figuring something out, then in review, you (the senior dev) can look at it for 30 seconds and see all the holes they missed and think of a simpler solution that uses 1/3 the amount of code. Simplicity is a skill and it's hard to do. There's a reason most people are not minimalists despite the almost universal western desire to "have less stuff".
  - troupo 3y ago
    > quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors. I've yet to see a single project that doesn't fail on all three.
    - mablopoule 3y ago
      I'm sadly not surprised to hear that, same for another poster who had the displeasure of working with a codebase with !important sprinkled everywhere. Truth is I've been spoiled on that front because I had the luck to work for many year in a company where the CTO was a very talented dude who lived and breathed HTML/CSS since the mid-2000's, and who was quite thoughtful about that kind of stuff, so I had a first-hand experience of a good codebase, mostly by avoiding external dependencies, using the standard browser behavior, and frequently consulting the MDN. This is why it's a bit disheartening to see so many front-end framework working against the plateform, even even marketing against it, while CSS and browser tooling his so much more enjoyable and powerful than before.
      - troupo 3y ago
        So, to have what you have you need a "very talented dude who lived and breathed CSS and HTML". Technology that makes it easier to make bad decisions than good decisions is not a good technology. > This is why it's a bit disheartening to see so many front-end framework working against the plateform, even even marketing against it None of the frameworks I know of do that.
        mablopoule 3y ago
        True, but the thing is that it wasn't really "complicated" CSS we used, but simply a good grasp on the fundamental of CSS, which is a overlooked part of web development. I believe it's mostly due to the fact that CSS, just like SQL, is one of those technology approachable enough to fiddle with it and get somewhat far, while not really learning it, and thus overlooking the fundamentals. > None of the frameworks I know of do that. I would squarely put into this category all the CSS-in-JS frameworks, such as 'styled components'. Also everything that markets the 'cascading' part of CSS as being a mistake. Also, all the frameworks that compiles CSS without generating the CSS sourcemaps, making the debugging experience way less efficient since all the applied CSS rules shows under '<style>' (eg: 'styled-components' again, who discarded it as being 'cosmetic' in the related Github issue).
  - tmorton 3y ago
    There are many technologies that match this pattern: "While X can be a footgun, it can also be quite clean when you use A, B, and C." In practice, they don't end up "quite clean" outside small personal projects.
  - dikei 3y ago
    > it can also be quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors. This fall apart pretty quickly as soon as more developers join the project. Keeping consistency between multiple team members is hard without a reference point, which is what a framework like Tailwind provides.
  - randomdigitz 3y ago
    Tailwind is a means to an end. If you think writing css is the best way to spend your time, go for it. But I guarantee I can ship things faster using Tailwind.
    - progx 3y ago
      Which things? Individual styled simple elements? Sure. Complex reusable and customizeable components, no way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    I'd say that the "stylesheets" part doesn't apply either. Tailwind creates "stylesets", and is absolutely powerless to apply them. Quite like WYSIWYG text editors. So, yeah, anybody claiming you are learning CSS by using it doesn't really know CSS. But I disagree, that kind of thing can be useful on certain contexts.
ourmandave 3y ago
You should really understand the CSS rules anyway (e.g. the C means cascading for a reason) so you can at least know what Tailwind is doing for you.
troupo 3y ago
> You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. 1. You need to know CSS to use Tailwind 2. I learned and understood quite a few of things I rarely use thanks to Tailwind's amazing docs. Docs that are non-existent for CSS 3. I'm reasonably good with CSS, but I could never come up with a consistent and minimal design system that Tailwind offers That said, to things everyone should read to up their CSS game is Every Layout https://every-layout.dev/ https://every-layout.dev/ and Inclusive Components https://book.inclusive-components.design/ https://book.inclusive-components.design/
- thrixton 3y ago
  Having a prebuilt consistent design system that you don’t have to build out for each project, arguing over defaults among the team is a lifesaver.
  - emmacharp 3y ago
    But you don't need Tailwind for that. A "designsystem.css" file with custom properties would do the trick. Without any added third party tech.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Why should anyone care about adding third party tech? This argument boils down to: “But you don’t need Tailwind for that. You can do more work for a (almost certainly) worse result with a designsystem.css!” Sure you can! Why?
      - emmacharp 3y ago
        (Almost certainly) worse? Haha. Why would it be? If you really want to, you can even use Tailwind's naming for you language file. The thing is, you add complexity to do a job that could be done in the same way without adding complexity and dependencies. Shouldn't we try to justify added complexity through added value?
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
i agree but ultimately what is cheap and fast wins. the future is someone else's problem. i think that's a good description for javascript too.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  It’s a good description for a lot of things, unfortunately.
randomdigitz 3y ago
I’ve learned CSS, used Bootstrap, and tried a bunch of other tools. Tailwind ecosystem is the fast approach to building web UIs in my experience. It doesn’t matter if you know CSS or not. Nobody gains if you know CSS per se. People gain when you deliver finished projects. Tailwind helps ship projects faster.
- nottorp 3y ago
  As a user of web sites, this attitude leads to me paying for your fast shipping in electricity for CPU usage, extra money for extra RAM, plus wear and tear on my nerves because you do what your library allows you to do instead of something usable. Thank you.
  - ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
    Yes as we have seen through the years, pure CSS has resulted only in energy-efficient websites that are highly usable. Slash Ess
    - nottorp 3y ago
      If you don't know how the lower level layers under your current abstraction work, you end up on accidentally quadratic. Am I more clear now?
      - afiori 3y ago
        Do you know how Tailwind works? What you say is generally true, but I don't really see how it applies to TW...
        nottorp 3y ago
        No of course I don't. And due to javascript's reputation, I assumed. Because what I said IS generally true for the js bubble. The sad part is i don't even feel guilty for assuming, because this area of programming has a well deserved reputation. Even if this thing doesn't use javascript, can you guarantee the generated CSS doesn't put the browser's layout engine in an infinite loop or something? Especially without knowing CSS, like the OP suggested it's normal?
epolanski 3y ago
+1. Let's say things how they are: Tailwind is a small catastrophe from an implementation, performance and maintenance point of views. It got few things quite well in being a more modern bootstrap, had a stellar marketing and it's color palettes are really well done and leagues above the default material ones. ...that being said... Tailwind's biggest pro is that it allows people that _don't_ know css that much to style stuff more consistently and easily. But that's where it ends. Sadly there's a lot of issues when it comes to maintenance. Any small update in tailwind will break your application. !important s are shoved pretty everywhere, they will unavoidably clash, prompt you to override even more styles. There's yet another complication with tailwind: the moment you want to do something more complex with tailwind or that it clashes with its own styles/rules you're in a bad corner where you need to know bot advanced css AND tailwind.
- llamaimperative 3y ago
  None of this mirrors my experience whatsoever. That’s “how things are” for me. I know CSS very well and Tailwind is probably the largest productivity boost I’ve encountered since, I don’t know, learning vim? It’s way faster than SASS/SCSS which is itself way faster than raw CSS. It also yields far more self-contained and more readily composable components than any other styling mechanism. Your comment doesn’t resonate with my experience at all.
  - xtian 3y ago
    My experience mirrors yours 100%. What the parent comments seem to be describing are Tailwind in a context where people don’t know CSS that well. Yes, that will be a catastrophe. But so will SASS or vanilla CSS — even more so. Tailwind is a utility, not a replacement for fundamental knowledge.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      On the other hand, people that know CSS very well will not need suddenly tailwind to get some utility classes.
hising 3y ago
Totally agree. Sometimes I feel old when having the same opinion.
jongjong 3y ago
Agree 100%. CSS is so good nowadays. Tailwind is yet another over-engineered hack of a framework foisted upon us. A solution looking for a problem. You don't need it. Do devs these days even know about Web Components and shadow DOM? You can define per-component styles now with CSS selectors to target any child elements within the component and you can do it in such a way that the styles are contained within the component... And for cases where you want to inherit styles, you can just use the regular light DOM. All these frameworks are re-inventing the wheel and making it worse. It's like having a perfectly good car and then attaching a horse at the front to pull it because you don't want to learn how the car works...
- dtagames 3y ago
  ++ for mentioning web components and the shadow DOM. They are the end of the road for prepackaged frameworks, IMHO.
  - ng12 3y ago
    Web components are a decade old, what do you think has changed or will change to make them more popular than frameworks? I think unless there are massive improvements to the developer experience the best hope for web components is as an implementation detail for a higher-level framework.
    - dtagames 3y ago
      Good question. I probably should have qualified my statement. I can think of a lot of cases where an organization is better off building custom components on something like Lit (close to bare metal), rather than trying to shoehorn Angular or React into what you want. On the other hand, having a lot of predefined pieces and methods is also helpful to some people. For me, I've been bitten and I would pick web components over a fixed framework for a clean sheet project. I don't think many devs have really tried to work with web components or they might get the bug, too! PS: I wrote an intro series on this topic on Medium[0]. [0] https://medium.com/gitconnected/getting-started-with-web-components-lit-part-1-911aa7058e9b https://medium.com/gitconnected/getting-started-with-web-com...
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
You're not downvoted, which means... the tailwind... is turning. I apologize.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Naomarik 3y ago
Five years? How about now. I saw a video a few months back featuring a VScode plugin to hide tailwind styles. If you have to use a plugin to manage your nuclear waste code by hiding most of it something is wrong.
- keyle 3y ago
  My god, it's true! https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stivo.tailwind-fold https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stivo.ta...
- mmmeff 3y ago
  Tailwind advocates don’t maintain their code, they just hop between companies and leave the disaster behind for someone else to deal with.
  - nkohari 3y ago
    This is nonsense. You can't substantiate this, and you should avoid making such sweeping generalizations. It adds nothing to the conversation.
    - mmmeff 3y ago
      Zealotry on display. How do you know I haven’t inherited a mess of tailwind before?
SkyMarshal 3y ago
Are there any CSS frameworks you like instead? Or just raw CSS?
dtagames 3y ago
I've been building websites since they were invented and I agree completely. CSS itself has evolved to the point where you are worse off if you use a pre-compiler or alternative. In one sense, it was always worse to use Tailwind because if you don't learn "real" CSS you won't be able to fix anything that's broken -- and with CSS, there's always a lot that's broken.
meerita 3y ago
The only thing that is true is people don't learn CSS but Tailwind syntax. But even with that, making a house of card of CSS isn't change the inherited problems of CSS.
onion2k 3y ago
You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. Learn CSS, that will stick with you for the next 20 years. You can't use Tailwind without knowing (quite a lot of) CSS. There's nothing in Tailwind that makes CSS easier or that obfuscates the technical understanding you need to make things with CSS. If you want to make a horizontal flexbox layout knowing "display: flex; flex-direction: row; flex-wrap: wrap;" or "flex flex-row flex-wrap" are functionally identical. You need to know what either the CSS or the Tailwind classes are doing to use them, and there's a one-to-one mapping between them. If you learn one then you know both. It's literally just a shorthand notation, or in a few places the equivalent of a macro. I don't imagine Tailwind is going to last another 20 years, but I do believe that people will use 'utility first' CSS libraries like it from now on. No one is going back to writing plain CSS unless they have no choice. CSS is becoming increasingly capable, and with that increasing complicated. People choose Tailwind because it affords you all the power of CSS with a somewhat less arcane syntax. Why would anyone stop using that? I do have a caveat though: I actually think Tailwind is the CSS equivalent of jQuery. In 5 years or so a browser is going to add a Tailwind style notation to its engine, and people will be able to use it without needing an external library. In that sense, yes, Tailwind will die, because browser developers will see the benefit is so significant that they'll adopt it as well.
- weo3dev 3y ago
  Except when using Tailwind, you're learning Tailwind nomenclature and syntax and approach - which really isn't modern CSS, at all. Today's CSS - if anyone would take the time to actually learn it as they do JavaScript - doesn't need something like Tailwind to make it powerful, scalable and manageable. I write plain CSS today, which is then scoped to components or bundles of interactivity, and all of those point to major, top-level control sheets that help determine the mode (light/dark/high contrast) and the theme. We tweak small changes up high to effect large platform changes throughout, saving time, energy and headache of the hunt/peck exercise. I don't understand the statement "no one is going back to writing plain CSS" because plain CSS today _is complex_. It is a beast. But it is still "plain" CSS. Yes, it has evolved, it has grown, and it meets today's modern needs with excellent results. CSS nesting is coming up soon: https://caniuse.com/css-nesting https://caniuse.com/css-nesting That will more than likely allow me to migrate any projects I have with Sass still in play, to remove Sass. One more dependency removed. Done. So there's really no need for Tailwind if you know how to build with modern CSS - with the one caveat that if a project _already_ has Tailwind in it, it is a bear to work with/alongside. That to me is the biggest con with Tailwind: it gets in your way when you don't need it.
blitz_skull 3y ago
Cool hot-take but it’s not true. You’re literally learning CSS when you learn tailwind. And no one (good) picks up a tool solely because it’s shiny, they pick it up because they find it has utility, which evidently LOTS of people do. And if you don’t think it’s reusable then you at least need to bring an argument for why that’s so because the docs, personal anecdote, and the opinion of LOTS of people is completely opposite. So: - You ARE learning CSS, you’re just putting it where it belongs: on the element it affects - It’s modernity doesn’t matter at all - It’s literally as reusable as raw CSS I can’t downvote you, but you’re definitely wrong.
- yoav 3y ago
  Senior Staff grey beard: Counterpoint: The C in CSS stands for Cascading. So you’re not learning CSS. You’re learning Tailwind specific classnames that expand to non-cascading style rules.
  - iambateman 3y ago
    Mid level beard: Tailwind makes most sense in an app developed with components. So the cascade still happens, just in a different way.
  - danielvaughn 3y ago
    This is not true. There's no way to create a "non-cascading style rule" unless the style rule already doesn't cascade. You still have to understand the cascade in order to use Tailwind.
    - doix 3y ago
      > You still have to understand the cascade in order to use Tailwind. Can you expand? I haven't used Tailwind, but from looking at the docs, it looks like a short-hand syntax for writing inline styles. Not exactly the same since it can take advantage of media queries and other things that you can't do with inline styles, but close enough conceptually. Where is the cascade with Tailwind? Perhaps I completely misunderstood how it works, but I would say that it feels like it's purposefully trying kill cascading.
sibit 3y ago
Tailwind 1.0 was great. Give me a few utility classes to style borders, fonts, backgrounds, and box shadows. Tailwind has descended into madness as they endlessly increase the scope.
mynegation 3y ago
Me: Taylor Swift’s song are bland, run-of-the-mill pop. Swifties: Pfff *plonk gajillions for the tickets. In cases like this I get curious and try to understand: why? I do not do CSS enough to arrive at the verdict about Tailwind, but my best understanding aligns pretty well with TFA. That and the fact that people wanted some framework that is popular and can be easily reused for results that look reasonably well. Bootstrap was it for a while, but Tailwind came and looked more modern. Taylor Swift - still beats me.
naribe 3y ago
I’ve studied and used CSS for 17 years. I’ve always enjoyed it and rarely complained. But tailwind is a joy to use and I prefer it over writing CSS. There’s no replacement for understanding the underlying technologies of frameworks, that’s true. Compared to some frameworks, tailwind is only a small layer of abstraction, one that does not obfuscate the underlying tech away. It does not prevent you from learning or using CSS. That’s why it’s so good. I frequently drop tailwind into projects because I know the shipped code footprint is low and it accelerates design.
bobmaxup 3y ago
I think this always gets summarized as: Tailwind is a pretty good framework for people who want to practice atomic CSS easily, and it is a bad framework for anyone trying to avoid that pattern. The pros and cons of atomic CSS can then be argued about elsewhere. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=atomic%20css&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
petabytes 3y ago
After a few years, writing CSS by hand gets really old. There's always 5 different ways to do something, and I don't know which one is the most performant or portable.
methodical 3y ago
Bootstrap and its newer counterpart Tailwind have been around collectively longer than a decade, and I can't see any reason why their popularity would die down. It's easier to learn, quicker to write, and reduces a lot of issues that arise from poor CSS. I can see why some people aren't a fan, but those people seem (from my perspective) to be either luddites or people who misunderstand Tailwind. When you have people across the entire spectrum of experience who find writing styles faster with Tailwind, I can't understand how people find themselves on the opposite side of the argument without having some underlying bias or no practical experience utilizing Tailwind.
afiori 3y ago
Tailwind is made for a component world where reusability is at the template/component level. This also covers both scoping issue with css: the usual issues with the single global namespace for classes and the unlimited depth of the descendant selector. That is even with scoped classes if your app has component nesting as <A id=1><B id=2><A id=3></A></B></A> then a selector like .A_box::hover .A_btn will select the class A_btn both in <A id=1> and <A id=3>. Tailwind solution is to manually or programmatically apply the relevant style in your template. The whole idea being that the unit of reuse is not the class name but the templating component.
- imbnwa 3y ago
  So do you do sibling selectors by using the array index in a `.map` call?
  - afiori 3y ago
    yes
LocalPCGuy 3y ago
This has been my general opinion on Tailwinds all along. When it first came out I thought it was kinda harmless, it's basically like some of the utility classes that always inevitably get made/used and that's great. But this idea that all styling should be done in HTML is antithetical to the whole reason CSS came to be in the first place, IMO. I can see why people like it to an extent, but I just don't really get the arguments that switching files to write CSS is "context switching" that makes things harder. If you need to see both your HTML and CSS at the same time then get a bigger monitor (mostly kidding). I just still see that well crafted HTML and CSS work together, make sense, and especially with all the new tools available in CSS, just isn't that hard to get right. Well structured HTML is the biggest pain point I see for those that struggle against CSS. Learn that, the cascade, learn how to encapsulate styles (there are plenty of good patterns) and it will flow just fine.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  I stayed away from Tailwind for the exact reasons you described until i joined a company that used it heavily and now I really see the value of it. I’m weary of new tools and cargo cult but Tailwind won me over. It really shines for apps that are changing rapidly and are at risk for generating dead CSS, which has been a problem in pretty much every commercial codebase I’ve ever worked on. Tailwind adds a simple, straightforward, one-way-to-do-things approach that creates a much more maintainable experience in HTML templates that results in zero dead CSS code. It’s absolutely not for people that need fine-tuned CSS APIs like animations, etc. But for building a product rapidly, it’s become a go-to for me.
  - LocalPCGuy 3y ago
    I get the challenge of dead CSS, I think there are strategies for managing that in complex apps without "ditching" CSS. And my understanding of Tailwinds is that it starts to break down for larger/complex apps also (but I've only used it on smaller things personally so that's just based on things I've read). I never try to be dogmatic about new things - so I'd try it again. I just haven't seen the benefits yet myself and so default to the cons I expressed earlier.
ghc 3y ago
I've been using CSS since 1997. CSS was basically a shit show for its first 20 years thanks to all the slightly differing browser implementations. I will tell you, that is what stuck with me. Tailwind is a massive improvement in terms of maintainability across teams and tooling. Thanks to Tailwind my team hasn't had to think about CSS resets and browser shims for over 5 years now, and any bugs where an application looks different in a particular browser can be forwarded to a team who will fix it, instead of us having to maintain an ever-growing pile of special rules and feature detection code. There is, of course, no silver bullet, but for a team building applications from components with React or Vue, Tailwind is a maintainability dream compared to stylesheets, and easier to train new devs on too.
- weo3dev 3y ago
  Except if you bundle your styling with the component, like you should be doing with React or Vue, and you have two _maybe_ three over-arching foundational style directives being implemented across your build, you do not need Tailwind. I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. Modular CSS has been much easier to maintain over years than fixing when Tailwind updates or finding (again) that one !important that happens to conflict with a new released component set. I save my teams time and money by applying CSS in the manner that it should be; which means not as an inline style mechanic.
  - ghc 3y ago
    > I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. While that's true, it also means you need to propagate all of your exceptions for support of old browsers. And you still need a ton of global styles so your application can be re-themed or white-labeled according to your customer specifications. And god forbid someone applies a color directly in a component and you have to grep the codebase looking for the errant code. After 5 years of tailwind on several complex applications, I can say that it's been easier to maintain, especially as engineers come and go, than any of the applications I worked on before. Frankly, every company I've ever worked for wound up with something like their own bespoke tailwind anyway, but instead of having it well-documented, every new hire had to learn whatever naming system whoever wrote the global design styles decided on. > I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. Modular CSS has been much easier to maintain over years than fixing when Tailwind updates or finding (again) that one !important that happens to conflict with a new released component set. In my experience that's empirically false. Maybe if you only care about Chrome, but CSS is hell to maintain when you need to keep support for browsers like pre-blink Edge.
lucasyvas 3y ago
I would concur that all I mostly need is CSS modules and to know when styles should be copied (most of the time) or actual utilities (rare). Any remaining reusability can be handled with templates / components (depends on your framework). The remaining potentially nice thing about Tailwind is that it more naturally constrains your options/syntax with utilities - when working with designers, this is probably a good thing. As always, the hardest problem of development is finding technology that best establishes the social contract.
ppradhan 3y ago
I have written more raw CSS than I have written Tailwind in my life. But I like the well thought out utility classes of Tailwind so much I only go raw when there is no option. I also don't think about it too much and sleep well at night ;)
sinan95 3y ago
I wished you provided arguments instead of "trust me bro".
naasking 3y ago
> It's as modern as the style parameter is, and it's as reusable as a moving a dirt pile from one corner to the next. For most uses, the only thing really wrong with the style attribute is the lack of breakpoints for responsive layouts.
- lyjackal 3y ago
  And pseudo selectors like hover, and animations. If these problems were solved in css style tags, I’m not really sure tailwind would have much to offer. It’s basically inline styles as class names
thomasmatecki 3y ago
Web technologies like this take hold because they make producing something more attainable to a wider group of people. Who cares if it's "worse". I'm a backend developer, who works mostly in python. I'm probably never going to learn CSS but I can produce a user interface that looks like I'm competent by copy-pasting tailwind divs. In 5 years, I'll hire someone who knows CSS to fix it. It'll be cheap because webflow and squarespace are allowing graphic designers to build websites, which is squeezing the demand for CSS as a skill.
- appplication 3y ago
  I second this as a backend python dev. I’m adopting tailwind for my latest project because I don’t need to learn the intricacies of front end styling. I really care so very minimally about it, and respectfully do not think anyone is going to need to be CSS masters in 20 years. If there’s any area where LLMs show promise to write reasonably responsible code, it’s front end styling. And that is coming from a huge skeptic of LLMs.
JeremyNT 3y ago
I'll take this anecdote and counter it with the success of Bootstrap. You could have been using it for an entire decade now. There's a robust ecosystem around it to this day. Tailwind as the "new bootstrap" makes a decent amount of sense. These frameworks aren't an excuse to ignore and misunderstand the underlying technology. It's worth understanding CSS, but these abstractions can really speed up development time, especially if your job involves more than "front end development" (which is still true for many of us).
- theodorejb 3y ago
  > Bootstrap's future is increasingly uncertain, of course, under Twitter/X. What do you mean? Bootstrap has not been affiliated with Twitter for more than a decade.
  - JeremyNT 3y ago
    I honestly wasn't aware of this - even the official git org is still 'twbs' and I assumed it was still related. I edited that part out, thanks for pointing it out.
cdelsolar 3y ago
Even grayer beard's 5c (well, I'm still under 40, but still): You could not pay me enough to learn CSS. Every time I have to debug CSS there go many valuable hours of my life. With an insane amount of trial and error and judicious use of Chrome's dev tools I can usually hack some garbage together, until the next time I have to figure out how to remove the background of a button. In the literal 90s I was building fully-featured GUI programs by dragging and dropping buttons and text boxes and inputs onto windows with Visual Basic, and the window resized nicely. Thirty years later I have to do the same thing with gazillions of arcane style sheets. It's a disaster. How did it get this way?
- cosmotic 3y ago
  > How did it get this way? Users were enamored by custom drawn UIs, so designers started demanding custom drawn UIs instead of native widgets. Most users don't understand what they lost and now pawing at interfaces to discover how they work is the new norm.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Don't forget that every few years, some new styling standard comes out. Forget tables, everything is floating divs. Forget floating divs, it's flexbox now. Forget flexbox, we're using columns.
- MR4D 3y ago
  > It's a disaster. How did it get this way? It’s called “progress” apparently, and older gray beards complained about it when we reinvented the mainframe through the same methodology. For all of the re-use that us computer folks talk about, we surely reinvent the wheel an awful lot. I’m guessing that we have some sort of stubborn creative streak that causes it all. That’s my excuse at least.
- _0w8t 3y ago
  There are plenty of web site builders that allow for a drag-and-drop construction. But people who use them are not programmers. I.e. programming is not supposed to be easy. So if one sticks to it, the problem has to be hard at least from the management point of view.
cageface 3y ago
As expected this dumb take shows up in every tailwind thread. Almost always by people that haven’t actually tried it. I was skeptical at first too but after building several large and successful sites with tailwind I’ll now choose it every time. It’s the only CSS method I’ve tried that doesn’t turn into a hot mess at scale. This attitude has become a pretty useful anti signal when considering who I want to work with though.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
In five years, there will be another framework that replaces this one, and still most people won't need to write CSS.
greenie_beans 3y ago
i think it's a matter of taste and preference. your taste and preference is different than mine. we don't have to work on the same projects together.

by keyle 3y ago

nisegami 3y ago

>You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. Learn CSS, that will stick with you for the next 20 years. Tailwind maps onto CSS in a very straightforward way. I think you'd have to go out of your way to "learn Tailwind" without also improving your knowledge of CSS.

mablopoule 3y ago
Except for the whole "Cascading" part. I think I understand tailwind, but like the parent poster I'm really not a fan, because while CSS can be a footgun, it can also be quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors.
- paleite 3y ago
  i think that’s what people’s argument FOR tailwind is: CSS can easily be a footgun, unless everyone on the team uses a sane DOM structure, CSS variables and well thought out CSS selectors. i’ve yet to witness a project without “!important” scattered throughout the codebase.
  - broast 3y ago
    That's sad to hear. Good CSS with an intuitive DOM structure is simple to achieve yet so powerful. Hate to see devs give up that power.
    - nisegami 3y ago
      Complex solutions are much, much easier than simple solutions.
      - yurishimo 3y ago
        Exactly this. Anyone who has worked with a junior developer understands this intuitively. They spend a week smashing their head against the desk figuring something out, then in review, you (the senior dev) can look at it for 30 seconds and see all the holes they missed and think of a simpler solution that uses 1/3 the amount of code. Simplicity is a skill and it's hard to do. There's a reason most people are not minimalists despite the almost universal western desire to "have less stuff".
- troupo 3y ago
  > quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors. I've yet to see a single project that doesn't fail on all three.
  - mablopoule 3y ago
    I'm sadly not surprised to hear that, same for another poster who had the displeasure of working with a codebase with !important sprinkled everywhere. Truth is I've been spoiled on that front because I had the luck to work for many year in a company where the CTO was a very talented dude who lived and breathed HTML/CSS since the mid-2000's, and who was quite thoughtful about that kind of stuff, so I had a first-hand experience of a good codebase, mostly by avoiding external dependencies, using the standard browser behavior, and frequently consulting the MDN. This is why it's a bit disheartening to see so many front-end framework working against the plateform, even even marketing against it, while CSS and browser tooling his so much more enjoyable and powerful than before.
    - troupo 3y ago
      So, to have what you have you need a "very talented dude who lived and breathed CSS and HTML". Technology that makes it easier to make bad decisions than good decisions is not a good technology. > This is why it's a bit disheartening to see so many front-end framework working against the plateform, even even marketing against it None of the frameworks I know of do that.
      - mablopoule 3y ago
        True, but the thing is that it wasn't really "complicated" CSS we used, but simply a good grasp on the fundamental of CSS, which is a overlooked part of web development. I believe it's mostly due to the fact that CSS, just like SQL, is one of those technology approachable enough to fiddle with it and get somewhat far, while not really learning it, and thus overlooking the fundamentals. > None of the frameworks I know of do that. I would squarely put into this category all the CSS-in-JS frameworks, such as 'styled components'. Also everything that markets the 'cascading' part of CSS as being a mistake. Also, all the frameworks that compiles CSS without generating the CSS sourcemaps, making the debugging experience way less efficient since all the applied CSS rules shows under '<style>' (eg: 'styled-components' again, who discarded it as being 'cosmetic' in the related Github issue).
- tmorton 3y ago
  There are many technologies that match this pattern: "While X can be a footgun, it can also be quite clean when you use A, B, and C." In practice, they don't end up "quite clean" outside small personal projects.
- dikei 3y ago
  > it can also be quite clean when you use a sane DOM structure, CSS variables, and well thought out CSS selectors. This fall apart pretty quickly as soon as more developers join the project. Keeping consistency between multiple team members is hard without a reference point, which is what a framework like Tailwind provides.
- randomdigitz 3y ago
  Tailwind is a means to an end. If you think writing css is the best way to spend your time, go for it. But I guarantee I can ship things faster using Tailwind.
  - progx 3y ago
    Which things? Individual styled simple elements? Sure. Complex reusable and customizeable components, no way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  I'd say that the "stylesheets" part doesn't apply either. Tailwind creates "stylesets", and is absolutely powerless to apply them. Quite like WYSIWYG text editors. So, yeah, anybody claiming you are learning CSS by using it doesn't really know CSS. But I disagree, that kind of thing can be useful on certain contexts.

ourmandave 3y ago

You should really understand the CSS rules anyway (e.g. the C means cascading for a reason) so you can at least know what Tailwind is doing for you.

troupo 3y ago

> You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. 1. You need to know CSS to use Tailwind 2. I learned and understood quite a few of things I rarely use thanks to Tailwind's amazing docs. Docs that are non-existent for CSS 3. I'm reasonably good with CSS, but I could never come up with a consistent and minimal design system that Tailwind offers That said, to things everyone should read to up their CSS game is Every Layout https://every-layout.dev/ https://every-layout.dev/ and Inclusive Components https://book.inclusive-components.design/ https://book.inclusive-components.design/

thrixton 3y ago
Having a prebuilt consistent design system that you don’t have to build out for each project, arguing over defaults among the team is a lifesaver.
- emmacharp 3y ago
  But you don't need Tailwind for that. A "designsystem.css" file with custom properties would do the trick. Without any added third party tech.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Why should anyone care about adding third party tech? This argument boils down to: “But you don’t need Tailwind for that. You can do more work for a (almost certainly) worse result with a designsystem.css!” Sure you can! Why?
    - emmacharp 3y ago
      (Almost certainly) worse? Haha. Why would it be? If you really want to, you can even use Tailwind's naming for you language file. The thing is, you add complexity to do a job that could be done in the same way without adding complexity and dependencies. Shouldn't we try to justify added complexity through added value?

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

i agree but ultimately what is cheap and fast wins. the future is someone else's problem. i think that's a good description for javascript too.

SkyMarshal 3y ago
It’s a good description for a lot of things, unfortunately.

randomdigitz 3y ago

I’ve learned CSS, used Bootstrap, and tried a bunch of other tools. Tailwind ecosystem is the fast approach to building web UIs in my experience. It doesn’t matter if you know CSS or not. Nobody gains if you know CSS per se. People gain when you deliver finished projects. Tailwind helps ship projects faster.

nottorp 3y ago
As a user of web sites, this attitude leads to me paying for your fast shipping in electricity for CPU usage, extra money for extra RAM, plus wear and tear on my nerves because you do what your library allows you to do instead of something usable. Thank you.
- ofcourseyoudo 3y ago
  Yes as we have seen through the years, pure CSS has resulted only in energy-efficient websites that are highly usable. Slash Ess
  - nottorp 3y ago
    If you don't know how the lower level layers under your current abstraction work, you end up on accidentally quadratic. Am I more clear now?
    - afiori 3y ago
      Do you know how Tailwind works? What you say is generally true, but I don't really see how it applies to TW...
      - nottorp 3y ago
        No of course I don't. And due to javascript's reputation, I assumed. Because what I said IS generally true for the js bubble. The sad part is i don't even feel guilty for assuming, because this area of programming has a well deserved reputation. Even if this thing doesn't use javascript, can you guarantee the generated CSS doesn't put the browser's layout engine in an infinite loop or something? Especially without knowing CSS, like the OP suggested it's normal?

epolanski 3y ago

+1. Let's say things how they are: Tailwind is a small catastrophe from an implementation, performance and maintenance point of views. It got few things quite well in being a more modern bootstrap, had a stellar marketing and it's color palettes are really well done and leagues above the default material ones. ...that being said... Tailwind's biggest pro is that it allows people that _don't_ know css that much to style stuff more consistently and easily. But that's where it ends. Sadly there's a lot of issues when it comes to maintenance. Any small update in tailwind will break your application. !important s are shoved pretty everywhere, they will unavoidably clash, prompt you to override even more styles. There's yet another complication with tailwind: the moment you want to do something more complex with tailwind or that it clashes with its own styles/rules you're in a bad corner where you need to know bot advanced css AND tailwind.

llamaimperative 3y ago
None of this mirrors my experience whatsoever. That’s “how things are” for me. I know CSS very well and Tailwind is probably the largest productivity boost I’ve encountered since, I don’t know, learning vim? It’s way faster than SASS/SCSS which is itself way faster than raw CSS. It also yields far more self-contained and more readily composable components than any other styling mechanism. Your comment doesn’t resonate with my experience at all.
- xtian 3y ago
  My experience mirrors yours 100%. What the parent comments seem to be describing are Tailwind in a context where people don’t know CSS that well. Yes, that will be a catastrophe. But so will SASS or vanilla CSS — even more so. Tailwind is a utility, not a replacement for fundamental knowledge.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    On the other hand, people that know CSS very well will not need suddenly tailwind to get some utility classes.

hising 3y ago

Totally agree. Sometimes I feel old when having the same opinion.

jongjong 3y ago

Agree 100%. CSS is so good nowadays. Tailwind is yet another over-engineered hack of a framework foisted upon us. A solution looking for a problem. You don't need it. Do devs these days even know about Web Components and shadow DOM? You can define per-component styles now with CSS selectors to target any child elements within the component and you can do it in such a way that the styles are contained within the component... And for cases where you want to inherit styles, you can just use the regular light DOM. All these frameworks are re-inventing the wheel and making it worse. It's like having a perfectly good car and then attaching a horse at the front to pull it because you don't want to learn how the car works...

dtagames 3y ago
++ for mentioning web components and the shadow DOM. They are the end of the road for prepackaged frameworks, IMHO.
- ng12 3y ago
  Web components are a decade old, what do you think has changed or will change to make them more popular than frameworks? I think unless there are massive improvements to the developer experience the best hope for web components is as an implementation detail for a higher-level framework.
  - dtagames 3y ago
    Good question. I probably should have qualified my statement. I can think of a lot of cases where an organization is better off building custom components on something like Lit (close to bare metal), rather than trying to shoehorn Angular or React into what you want. On the other hand, having a lot of predefined pieces and methods is also helpful to some people. For me, I've been bitten and I would pick web components over a fixed framework for a clean sheet project. I don't think many devs have really tried to work with web components or they might get the bug, too! PS: I wrote an intro series on this topic on Medium[0]. [0] https://medium.com/gitconnected/getting-started-with-web-components-lit-part-1-911aa7058e9b https://medium.com/gitconnected/getting-started-with-web-com...

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

You're not downvoted, which means... the tailwind... is turning. I apologize.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Naomarik 3y ago

Five years? How about now. I saw a video a few months back featuring a VScode plugin to hide tailwind styles. If you have to use a plugin to manage your nuclear waste code by hiding most of it something is wrong.

keyle 3y ago
My god, it's true! https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stivo.tailwind-fold https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stivo.ta...
mmmeff 3y ago
Tailwind advocates don’t maintain their code, they just hop between companies and leave the disaster behind for someone else to deal with.
- nkohari 3y ago
  This is nonsense. You can't substantiate this, and you should avoid making such sweeping generalizations. It adds nothing to the conversation.
  - mmmeff 3y ago
    Zealotry on display. How do you know I haven’t inherited a mess of tailwind before?

SkyMarshal 3y ago

Are there any CSS frameworks you like instead? Or just raw CSS?

dtagames 3y ago

I've been building websites since they were invented and I agree completely. CSS itself has evolved to the point where you are worse off if you use a pre-compiler or alternative. In one sense, it was always worse to use Tailwind because if you don't learn "real" CSS you won't be able to fix anything that's broken -- and with CSS, there's always a lot that's broken.

meerita 3y ago

The only thing that is true is people don't learn CSS but Tailwind syntax. But even with that, making a house of card of CSS isn't change the inherited problems of CSS.

onion2k 3y ago

You're not learning anything valuable by learning Tailwind. Learn CSS, that will stick with you for the next 20 years. You can't use Tailwind without knowing (quite a lot of) CSS. There's nothing in Tailwind that makes CSS easier or that obfuscates the technical understanding you need to make things with CSS. If you want to make a horizontal flexbox layout knowing "display: flex; flex-direction: row; flex-wrap: wrap;" or "flex flex-row flex-wrap" are functionally identical. You need to know what either the CSS or the Tailwind classes are doing to use them, and there's a one-to-one mapping between them. If you learn one then you know both. It's literally just a shorthand notation, or in a few places the equivalent of a macro. I don't imagine Tailwind is going to last another 20 years, but I do believe that people will use 'utility first' CSS libraries like it from now on. No one is going back to writing plain CSS unless they have no choice. CSS is becoming increasingly capable, and with that increasing complicated. People choose Tailwind because it affords you all the power of CSS with a somewhat less arcane syntax. Why would anyone stop using that? I do have a caveat though: I actually think Tailwind is the CSS equivalent of jQuery. In 5 years or so a browser is going to add a Tailwind style notation to its engine, and people will be able to use it without needing an external library. In that sense, yes, Tailwind will die, because browser developers will see the benefit is so significant that they'll adopt it as well.

weo3dev 3y ago
Except when using Tailwind, you're learning Tailwind nomenclature and syntax and approach - which really isn't modern CSS, at all. Today's CSS - if anyone would take the time to actually learn it as they do JavaScript - doesn't need something like Tailwind to make it powerful, scalable and manageable. I write plain CSS today, which is then scoped to components or bundles of interactivity, and all of those point to major, top-level control sheets that help determine the mode (light/dark/high contrast) and the theme. We tweak small changes up high to effect large platform changes throughout, saving time, energy and headache of the hunt/peck exercise. I don't understand the statement "no one is going back to writing plain CSS" because plain CSS today _is complex_. It is a beast. But it is still "plain" CSS. Yes, it has evolved, it has grown, and it meets today's modern needs with excellent results. CSS nesting is coming up soon: https://caniuse.com/css-nesting https://caniuse.com/css-nesting That will more than likely allow me to migrate any projects I have with Sass still in play, to remove Sass. One more dependency removed. Done. So there's really no need for Tailwind if you know how to build with modern CSS - with the one caveat that if a project _already_ has Tailwind in it, it is a bear to work with/alongside. That to me is the biggest con with Tailwind: it gets in your way when you don't need it.

blitz_skull 3y ago

Cool hot-take but it’s not true. You’re literally learning CSS when you learn tailwind. And no one (good) picks up a tool solely because it’s shiny, they pick it up because they find it has utility, which evidently LOTS of people do. And if you don’t think it’s reusable then you at least need to bring an argument for why that’s so because the docs, personal anecdote, and the opinion of LOTS of people is completely opposite. So: - You ARE learning CSS, you’re just putting it where it belongs: on the element it affects - It’s modernity doesn’t matter at all - It’s literally as reusable as raw CSS I can’t downvote you, but you’re definitely wrong.

yoav 3y ago
Senior Staff grey beard: Counterpoint: The C in CSS stands for Cascading. So you’re not learning CSS. You’re learning Tailwind specific classnames that expand to non-cascading style rules.
- iambateman 3y ago
  Mid level beard: Tailwind makes most sense in an app developed with components. So the cascade still happens, just in a different way.
- danielvaughn 3y ago
  This is not true. There's no way to create a "non-cascading style rule" unless the style rule already doesn't cascade. You still have to understand the cascade in order to use Tailwind.
  - doix 3y ago
    > You still have to understand the cascade in order to use Tailwind. Can you expand? I haven't used Tailwind, but from looking at the docs, it looks like a short-hand syntax for writing inline styles. Not exactly the same since it can take advantage of media queries and other things that you can't do with inline styles, but close enough conceptually. Where is the cascade with Tailwind? Perhaps I completely misunderstood how it works, but I would say that it feels like it's purposefully trying kill cascading.

sibit 3y ago

Tailwind 1.0 was great. Give me a few utility classes to style borders, fonts, backgrounds, and box shadows. Tailwind has descended into madness as they endlessly increase the scope.

mynegation 3y ago

Me: Taylor Swift’s song are bland, run-of-the-mill pop. Swifties: Pfff *plonk gajillions for the tickets. In cases like this I get curious and try to understand: why? I do not do CSS enough to arrive at the verdict about Tailwind, but my best understanding aligns pretty well with TFA. That and the fact that people wanted some framework that is popular and can be easily reused for results that look reasonably well. Bootstrap was it for a while, but Tailwind came and looked more modern. Taylor Swift - still beats me.

naribe 3y ago

I’ve studied and used CSS for 17 years. I’ve always enjoyed it and rarely complained. But tailwind is a joy to use and I prefer it over writing CSS. There’s no replacement for understanding the underlying technologies of frameworks, that’s true. Compared to some frameworks, tailwind is only a small layer of abstraction, one that does not obfuscate the underlying tech away. It does not prevent you from learning or using CSS. That’s why it’s so good. I frequently drop tailwind into projects because I know the shipped code footprint is low and it accelerates design.

bobmaxup 3y ago

I think this always gets summarized as: Tailwind is a pretty good framework for people who want to practice atomic CSS easily, and it is a bad framework for anyone trying to avoid that pattern. The pros and cons of atomic CSS can then be argued about elsewhere. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=atomic%20css&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

petabytes 3y ago

After a few years, writing CSS by hand gets really old. There's always 5 different ways to do something, and I don't know which one is the most performant or portable.

methodical 3y ago

Bootstrap and its newer counterpart Tailwind have been around collectively longer than a decade, and I can't see any reason why their popularity would die down. It's easier to learn, quicker to write, and reduces a lot of issues that arise from poor CSS. I can see why some people aren't a fan, but those people seem (from my perspective) to be either luddites or people who misunderstand Tailwind. When you have people across the entire spectrum of experience who find writing styles faster with Tailwind, I can't understand how people find themselves on the opposite side of the argument without having some underlying bias or no practical experience utilizing Tailwind.

afiori 3y ago

Tailwind is made for a component world where reusability is at the template/component level. This also covers both scoping issue with css: the usual issues with the single global namespace for classes and the unlimited depth of the descendant selector. That is even with scoped classes if your app has component nesting as <A id=1><B id=2><A id=3></A></B></A> then a selector like .A_box::hover .A_btn will select the class A_btn both in <A id=1> and <A id=3>. Tailwind solution is to manually or programmatically apply the relevant style in your template. The whole idea being that the unit of reuse is not the class name but the templating component.

imbnwa 3y ago
So do you do sibling selectors by using the array index in a `.map` call?
- afiori 3y ago
  yes

LocalPCGuy 3y ago

This has been my general opinion on Tailwinds all along. When it first came out I thought it was kinda harmless, it's basically like some of the utility classes that always inevitably get made/used and that's great. But this idea that all styling should be done in HTML is antithetical to the whole reason CSS came to be in the first place, IMO. I can see why people like it to an extent, but I just don't really get the arguments that switching files to write CSS is "context switching" that makes things harder. If you need to see both your HTML and CSS at the same time then get a bigger monitor (mostly kidding). I just still see that well crafted HTML and CSS work together, make sense, and especially with all the new tools available in CSS, just isn't that hard to get right. Well structured HTML is the biggest pain point I see for those that struggle against CSS. Learn that, the cascade, learn how to encapsulate styles (there are plenty of good patterns) and it will flow just fine.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
I stayed away from Tailwind for the exact reasons you described until i joined a company that used it heavily and now I really see the value of it. I’m weary of new tools and cargo cult but Tailwind won me over. It really shines for apps that are changing rapidly and are at risk for generating dead CSS, which has been a problem in pretty much every commercial codebase I’ve ever worked on. Tailwind adds a simple, straightforward, one-way-to-do-things approach that creates a much more maintainable experience in HTML templates that results in zero dead CSS code. It’s absolutely not for people that need fine-tuned CSS APIs like animations, etc. But for building a product rapidly, it’s become a go-to for me.
- LocalPCGuy 3y ago
  I get the challenge of dead CSS, I think there are strategies for managing that in complex apps without "ditching" CSS. And my understanding of Tailwinds is that it starts to break down for larger/complex apps also (but I've only used it on smaller things personally so that's just based on things I've read). I never try to be dogmatic about new things - so I'd try it again. I just haven't seen the benefits yet myself and so default to the cons I expressed earlier.

ghc 3y ago

I've been using CSS since 1997. CSS was basically a shit show for its first 20 years thanks to all the slightly differing browser implementations. I will tell you, that is what stuck with me. Tailwind is a massive improvement in terms of maintainability across teams and tooling. Thanks to Tailwind my team hasn't had to think about CSS resets and browser shims for over 5 years now, and any bugs where an application looks different in a particular browser can be forwarded to a team who will fix it, instead of us having to maintain an ever-growing pile of special rules and feature detection code. There is, of course, no silver bullet, but for a team building applications from components with React or Vue, Tailwind is a maintainability dream compared to stylesheets, and easier to train new devs on too.

weo3dev 3y ago
Except if you bundle your styling with the component, like you should be doing with React or Vue, and you have two _maybe_ three over-arching foundational style directives being implemented across your build, you do not need Tailwind. I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. Modular CSS has been much easier to maintain over years than fixing when Tailwind updates or finding (again) that one !important that happens to conflict with a new released component set. I save my teams time and money by applying CSS in the manner that it should be; which means not as an inline style mechanic.
- ghc 3y ago
  > I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. While that's true, it also means you need to propagate all of your exceptions for support of old browsers. And you still need a ton of global styles so your application can be re-themed or white-labeled according to your customer specifications. And god forbid someone applies a color directly in a component and you have to grep the codebase looking for the errant code. After 5 years of tailwind on several complex applications, I can say that it's been easier to maintain, especially as engineers come and go, than any of the applications I worked on before. Frankly, every company I've ever worked for wound up with something like their own bespoke tailwind anyway, but instead of having it well-documented, every new hire had to learn whatever naming system whoever wrote the global design styles decided on. > I believe both React and Vue have the capability to scope your CSS along with the components. Modular CSS has been much easier to maintain over years than fixing when Tailwind updates or finding (again) that one !important that happens to conflict with a new released component set. In my experience that's empirically false. Maybe if you only care about Chrome, but CSS is hell to maintain when you need to keep support for browsers like pre-blink Edge.

lucasyvas 3y ago

I would concur that all I mostly need is CSS modules and to know when styles should be copied (most of the time) or actual utilities (rare). Any remaining reusability can be handled with templates / components (depends on your framework). The remaining potentially nice thing about Tailwind is that it more naturally constrains your options/syntax with utilities - when working with designers, this is probably a good thing. As always, the hardest problem of development is finding technology that best establishes the social contract.

ppradhan 3y ago

I have written more raw CSS than I have written Tailwind in my life. But I like the well thought out utility classes of Tailwind so much I only go raw when there is no option. I also don't think about it too much and sleep well at night ;)

sinan95 3y ago

I wished you provided arguments instead of "trust me bro".

naasking 3y ago

> It's as modern as the style parameter is, and it's as reusable as a moving a dirt pile from one corner to the next. For most uses, the only thing really wrong with the style attribute is the lack of breakpoints for responsive layouts.

lyjackal 3y ago
And pseudo selectors like hover, and animations. If these problems were solved in css style tags, I’m not really sure tailwind would have much to offer. It’s basically inline styles as class names

thomasmatecki 3y ago

Web technologies like this take hold because they make producing something more attainable to a wider group of people. Who cares if it's "worse". I'm a backend developer, who works mostly in python. I'm probably never going to learn CSS but I can produce a user interface that looks like I'm competent by copy-pasting tailwind divs. In 5 years, I'll hire someone who knows CSS to fix it. It'll be cheap because webflow and squarespace are allowing graphic designers to build websites, which is squeezing the demand for CSS as a skill.

appplication 3y ago
I second this as a backend python dev. I’m adopting tailwind for my latest project because I don’t need to learn the intricacies of front end styling. I really care so very minimally about it, and respectfully do not think anyone is going to need to be CSS masters in 20 years. If there’s any area where LLMs show promise to write reasonably responsible code, it’s front end styling. And that is coming from a huge skeptic of LLMs.

JeremyNT 3y ago

I'll take this anecdote and counter it with the success of Bootstrap. You could have been using it for an entire decade now. There's a robust ecosystem around it to this day. Tailwind as the "new bootstrap" makes a decent amount of sense. These frameworks aren't an excuse to ignore and misunderstand the underlying technology. It's worth understanding CSS, but these abstractions can really speed up development time, especially if your job involves more than "front end development" (which is still true for many of us).

theodorejb 3y ago
> Bootstrap's future is increasingly uncertain, of course, under Twitter/X. What do you mean? Bootstrap has not been affiliated with Twitter for more than a decade.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  I honestly wasn't aware of this - even the official git org is still 'twbs' and I assumed it was still related. I edited that part out, thanks for pointing it out.

cdelsolar 3y ago

Even grayer beard's 5c (well, I'm still under 40, but still): You could not pay me enough to learn CSS. Every time I have to debug CSS there go many valuable hours of my life. With an insane amount of trial and error and judicious use of Chrome's dev tools I can usually hack some garbage together, until the next time I have to figure out how to remove the background of a button. In the literal 90s I was building fully-featured GUI programs by dragging and dropping buttons and text boxes and inputs onto windows with Visual Basic, and the window resized nicely. Thirty years later I have to do the same thing with gazillions of arcane style sheets. It's a disaster. How did it get this way?

cosmotic 3y ago
> How did it get this way? Users were enamored by custom drawn UIs, so designers started demanding custom drawn UIs instead of native widgets. Most users don't understand what they lost and now pawing at interfaces to discover how they work is the new norm.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Don't forget that every few years, some new styling standard comes out. Forget tables, everything is floating divs. Forget floating divs, it's flexbox now. Forget flexbox, we're using columns.
MR4D 3y ago
> It's a disaster. How did it get this way? It’s called “progress” apparently, and older gray beards complained about it when we reinvented the mainframe through the same methodology. For all of the re-use that us computer folks talk about, we surely reinvent the wheel an awful lot. I’m guessing that we have some sort of stubborn creative streak that causes it all. That’s my excuse at least.
_0w8t 3y ago
There are plenty of web site builders that allow for a drag-and-drop construction. But people who use them are not programmers. I.e. programming is not supposed to be easy. So if one sticks to it, the problem has to be hard at least from the management point of view.

cageface 3y ago

As expected this dumb take shows up in every tailwind thread. Almost always by people that haven’t actually tried it. I was skeptical at first too but after building several large and successful sites with tailwind I’ll now choose it every time. It’s the only CSS method I’ve tried that doesn’t turn into a hot mess at scale. This attitude has become a pretty useful anti signal when considering who I want to work with though.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

In five years, there will be another framework that replaces this one, and still most people won't need to write CSS.

greenie_beans 3y ago

i think it's a matter of taste and preference. your taste and preference is different than mine. we don't have to work on the same projects together.