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I would donate more upvotes to this multi-part tirade if I could. I haven't used Tailwind, or any other CSS framework, because I have never understood why I wo
by TOGoS 3y ago
I would donate more upvotes to this multi-part tirade if I could.
I haven't used Tailwind, or any other CSS framework, because I have never understood why I would want to, having attended a talk about a similar system back in the day where styles were turned into weirdly specific CSS classes, as if they were trying to reinvent font tags. The way you've described it is pretty much what I would expect from such a thing.
And yet it's oddly familiar, because all of the 'MVC' frameworks that I've been forced to use and hated[1] seemed to come from the same design philosophy: Throw a bunch of shit code together, then build a cult around it so that people use it whether it makes any sense or not. Laravel's a great example of this because if you search the web for it you'll mostly get results saying that it's "elegant" and "for web artisans", but none of them can explain why it's better than...not using it. They even have some class in there called "Illuminate", which is ironically not very illuminating w.r.t. what the heck it is or does. As if writing code that actually makes any damn sense is everyone's biggest fear and the solution is to acquire a magic wand from one of the Framework Gods that does away with pesky old logic and predictability.
"What do you want to do, write everything from scratch?", your coworkers will say, as if we were making computer programs by banging rocks together before Laravel/Rails/Spring/Django/etc came along, and give you a blank stare if you try to explain that writing regular old well-factored OO/functional code is a thing you can do and that slathering culty frameworky paste all over everything doesn't make life any better or your programs any faster, even if said goo has "good documentation", by which they mean lots of activity on Stack Overflow because nobody can figure out how they're supposed to do anything without copy-pasting from some example that mysteriously worked for somebody one time.
[1] I don't remember much about the ones I didn't hate, because they did very little and stayed out of the way.
- jonwinstanley 3y agoHahaha - I wonder if Tailwind is starting to take over from frameworks v no-framework as the best way to start a huge fiery debate on HN!
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoTailwind is extremely polarizing, yes like frameworks, and yes like politics. This polarization tends to happen on the two sides of "reality distortion fields", where someone's propaganda on one side, doesn't match propaganda on the other side. It's like Russians believing the West is the worst, and Putin is there to save them from The Gays. Or the West casually ignoring their impact on Russia with NATO advancing to the doorstep of an old, imperialistic, paranoid regime. What are they supposed to think? But describing this as merely "both sides have equal merit" is really crude. Because more often than not, one side tends to be closer to the truth. Maybe Tailwind has some neat ideas. In fact I'm sure it has some neat ideas. Placed carefully somewhere in the calm eye, the dead center of this tornado of bullshit that is Tailwind overall. But then again, we can't ignore the tornado of bullshit.
- jonwinstanley 3y agoI suppose it depends if you're trying to build the perfect website, or just want to get something launched fast. I usually build websites to solve a problem, or to try out a business idea. The structure of the HTML and whether I am using a web framework are not important to me. The main thing is, can I get this finished and looking great in a few days.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoI hear this argument a lot, on the surface it makes sense. We all want to ship fast. Right? But then... I try to imagine how Tailwind allows you to style your site in a few days, but it'd take you, the same person, what... weeks, to style it with CSS? It's so ridiculous it's making me laugh out loud just imagining this somehow. As if CSS is this thing for rocket engineers that is way beyond a common man's grasp? Seriously, how LOW is the bar, I don't get it? When is something as easy and basic as CSS... just easy enough? "property: value;" Or have you never given CSS a chance, and you were heavily gaslit by Tailwind marketing into thinking CSS is a scary monster and here comes the savior Tailwind? I can accept the latter, but this is also the reason why I find these fad frameworks such a harmful phenomenon. But I can't fathom the former.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jonwinstanley 3y agoYes I agree. But people always move towards the tools that help them go a little faster.