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I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

en.andros.dev

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Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#131

Post by pupppet »

pixard wrote: post #29

I see you have a .button, cool! So did you load the entire context of your project into your mind, and calculate every possible iteration of kind, size, color etc this button may have? And once you did that, did you come up with a semantically correct naming scheme that is clear and will not succumb to the inevitable .button_checkout_special_page_cta_widget a particular page will end up requiring? No? Neither did I.…

And did you remember to include the exact same Tailwind classes with every instance of your button in your project?

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#134

Post by _heimdall »

9dev wrote: post #10

This is such a bikeshedding debate. While you don't recommend it, projects with Tailwind work . Over years. You can onboard new developers to it, able to contribute productively immediately . Likewise, you can pick up work after months or years and don't have to remember or rediscover how your styling layer works. The conventions and class names come really naturally fast, and you can always look it up. It's just not…

I've never found tailwind to help someone who isn't already a reasonably skilled web developer. If you don't know CSS tailwind gets your far enough sometimes, but you have to learn many of the same paradigms as you would in CSS and you can still create issues that aren't as simple as missing "text-green-500".

Tailwind seems most useful for devs who don't want to be responsible for managing multiple CSS files and all the naming conventions that come along with it. They're basically looking for using inline styles after having likely heard for a long time to not use the style tag.

For me at least, any value from tailwind went out the window when frameworks started leaning into single file components and scoped styles. I keep components small enough that generally my style selectors are only using element and attribute selectors, I dodge the class naming issue entirely and still get to use CSS instead of inline styles.

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#135

Post by Kuraj »

> It breaks the separation between structure and design

I have a problem with this argument because CSS _itself_ breaks that separation.

`border: 1px solid red;` is design, but `display: flex;` is structure.

In my opinion, it makes sense for display properties to live in the HTML because they are by their very nature very tighly coupled to the markup.

Though I appreciate that making this distinction creates a separate problem of your team having to exercise good judgement (and consistency) in which CSS belongs where.

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#136

Post by wildrhythms »

zandert wrote: post #38

Strongly disagree with the point of not learning CSS. Bootstrap and the sorts that were en vogue before were terrible abstractions. All the mental models required to be good at writing proper stylesheets are trained nicely with Tailwind

You have to know CSS to work with tailwind, it literally demands knowledge of the underlying rules.

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#137

Post by reneberlin »

epolanski wrote: post #25

I can immediately spot organizations void of any skilled frontend engineering leadership by their use of Tailwind. Generally coupled by some memory leaking React soup, solving 2016 SPA problems in 2026. Likely 30-something years old MIT-bred leetcode ninjas that know little to nothing about front end technologies in the first place. They don't even remember _why_ the industry reached for client-side rendering library…

Straight from my heart - i couldn't have said it better. I always had this answer in my head, but nobody asked and it felt senseless to talk about unpopular opinions. Now you have been faster than me, here under the umbrella of the tailwind-topic - but you should know, you are not alone with exactly that attitude.

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#138

Post by ojr »

IDEs can autocomplete tailwind classes but eventually you just memorize them, also with AI assisted coding I don't even write the classes anymore just small adjustments like changing pt-3 to pt-4, AI implemented dark mode in a small app I am working on in one shot, I think tailwind being in the training data helped tremendously with the task.

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#139

Post by atif089 »

greggh wrote: post #122
atif089 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been in the industry for a while > Out of curiosity how long have you been doing frontend development? I've been writing CSS since IE 6 and I can tell you not a lot of us oldies like tailwind. I've only seen a strong inclination towards Tailwind from the newer generation frontends (2015 and beyond) Us oldies actually prefer BEM over anything else. My talking point is based off internal comms from a large'ish…

Many of us oldies who started working on the web years before IE 6 actually like Tailwind. We all have our preferences. But I know multiple 50+ year olds who have been doing this work since CSS was barely a proposal who now use Tailwind.

[dead]

Re: I don't recommend Tailwind CSS

#140

Post by satvikpendem »

Aeolos wrote: post #69
afavour wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny, as someone that’s been using CSS for decades I don’t really know how to respond because the scenario outlined here is not one I recognise. My button would be a , so no, I wouldn’t have a .button class, it’s superfluous. What I would have is: - a global palette specified via CSS variables - overrides for dark mode etc specified at the global level so I don’t have to worry about it at the component level -…

You just make a design system in your tailwind.css, following the documentation. You can optionally use something like daisyui if you do not have designer skills or the time. That handles consistent sizing, spacing, text, colors, dark mode, and anything else your design system needs. It all compiles down to css in the end, so no runtime overhead and gives you the superior tailwind dx during development.

Congratulations, you reinvented regular CSS.
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