This article makes a couple of false/misleading claims. But let me write about what it presents as a better (old) practice compared to TailwindCSS first:
“Semantic CSS” is not a standard, like semantic HTML follows certain rules that are widely accepted. At the end of the day, everyone is writing their own “button” CSS class, and it is different on every website you look at. It doesn’t help whether you name something “.nav” or “.gallery” if you are the first person deciding the CSS rules for it. Your code might be “semantic” in your personal understanding of how things should be named, but your naming convention is useless to others who have to maintain your code and still need to look up what “.gallery” actually means. So, from my understanding this is part of the reason TailwindCSS exists: transparent markup and improved maintainability in the long term.
As stated above this article makes a couple of false/misleading claims. For example:
- With TailwindCSS “you are forced to wrap divs inside divs inside divs”. Not true. I'm writing TailwindCSS code for a couple of years now and can confidently say that this is NOT what Tailwind forces you to do. You don’t need extra HTML markup to make Tailwind work. Your HTML can be perfectly “semantic” without wasted divs.
- “… utility-first approach lacks the power of CSS selectors”: Not true. TailwindCSS comes with grouping and child selector classes, for example.
- It also states that Tailwind styles elements exclusively inline, which is also not correct. They encourage you to name things as well but warn you of premature abstracting in their docs (https://tailwindcss.com/docs/reusing-styles#extracting-class...).
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I also can't help but feel a little patronized by the tone of this article. Examples:
- “Mastering CSS requires practice”
- “But when you truly master CSS, there is no turning back” (and you don't need Tailwind)
- You only require Tailwind when you have a “bad CSS structure” or you don't care about your code (https://nuejs.org/blog/tailwind-vs-semantic-css/#but-i-move-...).
If I was new to coding, these statements would discourage me trying out new things. I don't know how you learned to code, but sticking to the fundamentals didn't get me anywhere. Yes, you need to learn them, but you also want to get things done (and figure out later how they work). Writing CSS is not an ancient art, it’s not pretty or a noble thing to do.