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So happy to see CSS Zen Garden on HN today! Those were the days! But I've also got to rant now. What I find most troubling about Tailwind and CSS "frameworks"

So happy to see CSS Zen Garden on HN today! Those were the days! But I've also got to rant now. What I find most troubling about Tailwind and CSS "frameworks" like it (and modern software development in general) is the growing pride in not understanding the underlying systems. Tailwind offers a quick, surface-level solution: you can slap some utility classes onto a page and get something that looks "good enough" without ever learning how CSS actually works. Nevermind that the HTML is now a mess where you've got more CSS classes than content! The attitude is, "Who cares how it works? I got my pretty page. That's a win!" But this isn't just a Tailwind problem. It's part of a larger trend in the industry: celebrating ignorance, rushing for results without building real understanding. When did not knowing become something to be proud of? Isn't it sad that depth and mastery are now treated as optional, even undesirable? /rant

panstromek 1y ago
I get the idea, but don't think that's the case for Tailwind. Tailwind classes map directly to CSS properties, you can't really do much with it if you don't understand CSS
- throwaway150 1y ago
  Are you sure? Could it be confirmation bias because you do understand the CSS? From what I've seen across multiple teams, it's very common for developers to just slap Tailwind onto their project, copy-paste classes they found online and call it "done." Maintainability and reusability are treated as someone else's problem.
  - bcye 1y ago
    Copy-pasting code and calling it done isn't limited to Tailwind though.
budgi4 1y ago
Software development is a layering of abstractions over time. How's your assembly?
- vacuity 1y ago
  How's your Electron app's performance? It's very concerning when software developers neglect that their tools (abstractions) have tradeoffs. "If civil engineers built bridges the way software engineers build applications, the bridges would all fall down in a month". And similar sentiments. Granted, most things aren't mission-critical, but then just because my house won't collapse doesn't mean I want to waste money on poor insulation and broken appliances.
perilunar 1y ago
> Nevermind that the HTML is now a mess where you've got more CSS classes than content! It shocks me how bad most HTML is. I just had a look at Twitter, and a single post in my timeline (a paragraph of text, an image, and ~10 linked icons) was 254 lines and 21.8 kB for just the HTML, and had 104 nested divs and 860+ classes! That's more classes than characters of text content. About 9 kB of class names alone. And that is then repeated for every post in the timeline. It should be a few divs max, a couple of classes (+ one for each icon), and a few lines of CSS. Seriously. You could style every post in the timeline with fewer characters than in the class names on one single post. I don't understand how professional developers can make something so obscenely bloated.

panstromek 1y ago

I get the idea, but don't think that's the case for Tailwind. Tailwind classes map directly to CSS properties, you can't really do much with it if you don't understand CSS

throwaway150 1y ago
Are you sure? Could it be confirmation bias because you do understand the CSS? From what I've seen across multiple teams, it's very common for developers to just slap Tailwind onto their project, copy-paste classes they found online and call it "done." Maintainability and reusability are treated as someone else's problem.
- bcye 1y ago
  Copy-pasting code and calling it done isn't limited to Tailwind though.

budgi4 1y ago

Software development is a layering of abstractions over time. How's your assembly?

vacuity 1y ago
How's your Electron app's performance? It's very concerning when software developers neglect that their tools (abstractions) have tradeoffs. "If civil engineers built bridges the way software engineers build applications, the bridges would all fall down in a month". And similar sentiments. Granted, most things aren't mission-critical, but then just because my house won't collapse doesn't mean I want to waste money on poor insulation and broken appliances.

perilunar 1y ago

> Nevermind that the HTML is now a mess where you've got more CSS classes than content! It shocks me how bad most HTML is. I just had a look at Twitter, and a single post in my timeline (a paragraph of text, an image, and ~10 linked icons) was 254 lines and 21.8 kB for just the HTML, and had 104 nested divs and 860+ classes! That's more classes than characters of text content. About 9 kB of class names alone. And that is then repeated for every post in the timeline. It should be a few divs max, a couple of classes (+ one for each icon), and a few lines of CSS. Seriously. You could style every post in the timeline with fewer characters than in the class names on one single post. I don't understand how professional developers can make something so obscenely bloated.