6 ms·

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

sonofhans 10mo ago
If you can find a way to do it better or cheaper you’re welcome to try. No one else has. Don’t think it’s a small problem. The number of user agents and platforms supported by Tailwind would melt plenty of larger organizations.
- exceptione 10mo ago
  Maybe we accidentally found a more meaningful chance for having a discussion about LLMs. As CSS is limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable and declarative, this should be a home run for LLMs.
  - IsTom 10mo ago
    > limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable Are we talking about the same CSS?
    - mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
      lol People don't realize that Tailwind democratized styling for a lot of people who didn't want to or didn't know how to write CSS. We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. LLMs, by their nature, work better with Tailwind since it needs a much smaller context to make the right decision.
      - doodlesdev 10mo ago
        > We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. A lot of us have never stopped writing hand-crafted CSS. Also, in my experience, Gemini 3 Pro is an absolute monster at writing layouts and styling in pure CSS with very basic descriptions of what I want (tested it while I was experimenting with vibe coding in some sleepless night LOL). There are still a lot of developers who loathe using Tailwind and avoid touching it like the plague. Handwritten CSS still offers more opportunities for optimization and keeps your markup much cleaner than spamming utility classes everywhere (I understand the appeal of rapidly iterating with it, though).
        mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
        I apologize, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I spent a decent amount of time working in marketing and ad agencies, and there are absolutely still needs for custom CSS in that area, so I agree. I was more pushing back against the idea that Tailwind will be replaced by vanilla CSS because of LLMs.
        doodlesdev 10mo ago
        That I can agree with hahaha. Even though I'm not a fan of Tailwind, there's absolutely no reason developers who like utility libraries will abandon them because of LLMs.
  - reassess_blind 10mo ago
    It is. That’s why Tailwind had to lay off 75% of their staff.
    - AlecSchueler 10mo ago
      But they're still struggling for money.
      - fatata123 10mo ago
        [dead]
      - reassess_blind 10mo ago
        Yes, they’re struggling because a large part of their business was selling the pro product of pre-built themes, pages and components and whatever else. Now, LLMs have all but killed that side of their business. The latest models are incredibly good at writing Tailwind, to the point where no one is buying the pre-builts.
  - jpalomaki 10mo ago
    Agents are not yet very good at figuring out how things look on the screen. Or at least in my experience this is where they need most human guidance. They can take screenshots and study those, but I’m not sure how well they can spot when things are a bit off.
  - mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
    Nah, Tailwind is way more important for LLMs than vanilla CSS. Models work in contexts. If my context is "my entire app's styling", then it's going to be really difficult to write styles in line unless it's already pretty perfect. Tailwind doesn't have that problem. It's local. I can define a single theme and KNOW FOR A FACT how something will look before it even touches my code. That's the beauty of utility-like libraries. I stopped working in marketing and advertising (which DID need custom styles), and went to strictly app dev where my needs completely changed.
- AlecSchueler 10mo ago
  This doesn't really answer my question and is quite a flippant response. I didn't claim I could do better, I'm asking why they need so many resources to do what they do.
troupo 10mo ago
They don't only make TailwindCSS. They also make a large collection of components and templates at https://tailwindcss.com/plus https://tailwindcss.com/plus
- robertjpayne 10mo ago
  Yes but Tailwind Plus has a flawed business model, AI was not really the reason nobody bought it, it's that it's a lifetime purchase and that shadcn + LLMs has eaten their cake left right and central. If LLMs didn't exist but shadcn still did, do you think people would pay and use Tailwind+ or shadcn?
  - d1sxeyes 10mo ago
    What’s the problem with the lifetime purchase?
    - corobo 10mo ago
      It takes the recurring out of recurring revenue, 100% churn
    - hennell 10mo ago
      It's the difference between one-off revenue and recurring revenue. If you're making new components, making new changes for the new version, adding new css and browser support it's hard to keep going with only income from new customers.
  - omnimus 10mo ago
    Tailwind UI is tool companies buy to save dev time mostly on internal/back office tools. It's usually bought per project. The math is pretty easy - if it saves you few hours of devtime you buy TailwindUI. Shadcn and bazillion other similar things are certainly competition but TailwindUI is very broad and of high quality so why not pick the nicest version. The problem is that Tailwind is extremely portable (thats why it's so popular) and since LLMs have been fed all TailwindUI code... people using LLMs don't even have to know that TailwindUI exists they just get some Tailwind styled components. They would probably look pretty confused if you told them you used to buy these templates.
andruby 10mo ago
The question isn't "what is the lowest cost that a CSS library could be maintained for" The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? Think of the immense value that Tailwind is bringing to all the companies and developers using it. Surely there should be a way for the creators to capture a small slice of that in our economic system.
- AlecSchueler 10mo ago
  So the millions of dollars are going towards marketing and suchlike you mean?
  - andruby 10mo ago
    I don't understand. Does Tailwind spend money on marketing? Afaik they mostly spend on salaries and probably a bit on hosting/infra.
- Maro 10mo ago
  > the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) Like others earlier in the thread I'm symphatetic to this company/project, but your code/project being referenced often in AI output in itself doesn't imply that the thing needs to be a business. bash, curl, awk, Python code with numpy imports, C++, all sorts of code is constantly being generated by AI, doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or that the AI Labs need to fund them. As other fave written, making $1M+ already feels like a lot, maybe this shouldn't be a company, just 1-2 people who have a great time supporting this thing. I wonder if curl or awk have that kind of funding even..
  - FelipeCortez 10mo ago
    > doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or that the AI Labs need to fund them. you'd be surprised https://numpy.org/about/#sponsors https://numpy.org/about/#sponsors https://curl.se/sponsors.html https://curl.se/sponsors.html
toddmorey 10mo ago
It was more than a library of prewritten css, though, they did quite a bit of engineering work on tooling (speeding up the code scans and dynamically creating custom classes, etc). I respect the team's productivity. This is more a question about the business model of open source, which has always had some challenges. I don't think you can support OSS with premium templates, training, and support once the knowledge is baked into LLMs.
plagiarist 10mo ago
I am wondering why are there three owners for a commercial CSS library?
tpmoney 10mo ago
Well they clearly don't "need" that many devs just to maintain it, since they just laid off most of their devs. But "need" and "want / have the revenue/work to hire and sustain" are different questions. I've never worked a single development position where there wasn't always more work to do and not enough people or time to do it. It appears they previously did have the revenue, and presumably had the work. Now they don't have the revenue, and so they had to let people go, and some of that work will go undone or take longer.
whatevaa 10mo ago
You have one developer. He gets hit by a bus. Now you are fucked. Having at least several people in critical role helps protect against busses.

If you can find a way to do it better or cheaper you’re welcome to try. No one else has. Don’t think it’s a small problem. The number of user agents and platforms supported by Tailwind would melt plenty of larger organizations.

exceptione 10mo ago
Maybe we accidentally found a more meaningful chance for having a discussion about LLMs. As CSS is limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable and declarative, this should be a home run for LLMs.
- IsTom 10mo ago
  > limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable Are we talking about the same CSS?
  - mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
    lol People don't realize that Tailwind democratized styling for a lot of people who didn't want to or didn't know how to write CSS. We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. LLMs, by their nature, work better with Tailwind since it needs a much smaller context to make the right decision.
    - doodlesdev 10mo ago
      > We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. A lot of us have never stopped writing hand-crafted CSS. Also, in my experience, Gemini 3 Pro is an absolute monster at writing layouts and styling in pure CSS with very basic descriptions of what I want (tested it while I was experimenting with vibe coding in some sleepless night LOL). There are still a lot of developers who loathe using Tailwind and avoid touching it like the plague. Handwritten CSS still offers more opportunities for optimization and keeps your markup much cleaner than spamming utility classes everywhere (I understand the appeal of rapidly iterating with it, though).
      - mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
        I apologize, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I spent a decent amount of time working in marketing and ad agencies, and there are absolutely still needs for custom CSS in that area, so I agree. I was more pushing back against the idea that Tailwind will be replaced by vanilla CSS because of LLMs.
        doodlesdev 10mo ago
        That I can agree with hahaha. Even though I'm not a fan of Tailwind, there's absolutely no reason developers who like utility libraries will abandon them because of LLMs.
- reassess_blind 10mo ago
  It is. That’s why Tailwind had to lay off 75% of their staff.
  - AlecSchueler 10mo ago
    But they're still struggling for money.
    - fatata123 10mo ago
      [dead]
    - reassess_blind 10mo ago
      Yes, they’re struggling because a large part of their business was selling the pro product of pre-built themes, pages and components and whatever else. Now, LLMs have all but killed that side of their business. The latest models are incredibly good at writing Tailwind, to the point where no one is buying the pre-builts.
- jpalomaki 10mo ago
  Agents are not yet very good at figuring out how things look on the screen. Or at least in my experience this is where they need most human guidance. They can take screenshots and study those, but I’m not sure how well they can spot when things are a bit off.
- mexicocitinluez 10mo ago
  Nah, Tailwind is way more important for LLMs than vanilla CSS. Models work in contexts. If my context is "my entire app's styling", then it's going to be really difficult to write styles in line unless it's already pretty perfect. Tailwind doesn't have that problem. It's local. I can define a single theme and KNOW FOR A FACT how something will look before it even touches my code. That's the beauty of utility-like libraries. I stopped working in marketing and advertising (which DID need custom styles), and went to strictly app dev where my needs completely changed.
AlecSchueler 10mo ago
This doesn't really answer my question and is quite a flippant response. I didn't claim I could do better, I'm asking why they need so many resources to do what they do.

troupo 10mo ago

They don't only make TailwindCSS. They also make a large collection of components and templates at https://tailwindcss.com/plus https://tailwindcss.com/plus

robertjpayne 10mo ago
Yes but Tailwind Plus has a flawed business model, AI was not really the reason nobody bought it, it's that it's a lifetime purchase and that shadcn + LLMs has eaten their cake left right and central. If LLMs didn't exist but shadcn still did, do you think people would pay and use Tailwind+ or shadcn?
- d1sxeyes 10mo ago
  What’s the problem with the lifetime purchase?
  - corobo 10mo ago
    It takes the recurring out of recurring revenue, 100% churn
  - hennell 10mo ago
    It's the difference between one-off revenue and recurring revenue. If you're making new components, making new changes for the new version, adding new css and browser support it's hard to keep going with only income from new customers.
- omnimus 10mo ago
  Tailwind UI is tool companies buy to save dev time mostly on internal/back office tools. It's usually bought per project. The math is pretty easy - if it saves you few hours of devtime you buy TailwindUI. Shadcn and bazillion other similar things are certainly competition but TailwindUI is very broad and of high quality so why not pick the nicest version. The problem is that Tailwind is extremely portable (thats why it's so popular) and since LLMs have been fed all TailwindUI code... people using LLMs don't even have to know that TailwindUI exists they just get some Tailwind styled components. They would probably look pretty confused if you told them you used to buy these templates.

andruby 10mo ago

The question isn't "what is the lowest cost that a CSS library could be maintained for" The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? Think of the immense value that Tailwind is bringing to all the companies and developers using it. Surely there should be a way for the creators to capture a small slice of that in our economic system.

AlecSchueler 10mo ago
So the millions of dollars are going towards marketing and suchlike you mean?
- andruby 10mo ago
  I don't understand. Does Tailwind spend money on marketing? Afaik they mostly spend on salaries and probably a bit on hosting/infra.
Maro 10mo ago
> the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) Like others earlier in the thread I'm symphatetic to this company/project, but your code/project being referenced often in AI output in itself doesn't imply that the thing needs to be a business. bash, curl, awk, Python code with numpy imports, C++, all sorts of code is constantly being generated by AI, doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or that the AI Labs need to fund them. As other fave written, making $1M+ already feels like a lot, maybe this shouldn't be a company, just 1-2 people who have a great time supporting this thing. I wonder if curl or awk have that kind of funding even..
- FelipeCortez 10mo ago
  > doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or that the AI Labs need to fund them. you'd be surprised https://numpy.org/about/#sponsors https://numpy.org/about/#sponsors https://curl.se/sponsors.html https://curl.se/sponsors.html

toddmorey 10mo ago

It was more than a library of prewritten css, though, they did quite a bit of engineering work on tooling (speeding up the code scans and dynamically creating custom classes, etc). I respect the team's productivity. This is more a question about the business model of open source, which has always had some challenges. I don't think you can support OSS with premium templates, training, and support once the knowledge is baked into LLMs.

plagiarist 10mo ago

I am wondering why are there three owners for a commercial CSS library?

tpmoney 10mo ago

Well they clearly don't "need" that many devs just to maintain it, since they just laid off most of their devs. But "need" and "want / have the revenue/work to hire and sustain" are different questions. I've never worked a single development position where there wasn't always more work to do and not enough people or time to do it. It appears they previously did have the revenue, and presumably had the work. Now they don't have the revenue, and so they had to let people go, and some of that work will go undone or take longer.

whatevaa 10mo ago

You have one developer. He gets hit by a bus. Now you are fucked. Having at least several people in critical role helps protect against busses.