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Shopify acquires Tailwind

tailwindcss.com

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Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#311

Post by zelphirkalt »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #297
zelphirkalt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not run into cross-browser differences in a long time. That is differences, that actually mattered and for which I would have had to build any workaround. I have built several websites recently, using vanilla HTML and CSS and solved everything using server-side rendering. What problems specifically do you see with server-side rendering?

From a security perspective I greatly prefer a client-server approach: you have an unsafe frontend where you care about ergonomy and aesthetics, and a backend which provides an API which handles the security. Two different worlds and often two different kinds of developpers

I think we actually don't disagree there, but we have a different understanding of the term "server-side". Anything related to security must happen on the server since safety measures in scripts running client-side can be defeated.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#312

Post by mrits »

petcat wrote: post #25

I instruct my agents to build UI exclusively with bootstrap 5, jQuery, and HTMX. Every app is fast, responsive, progressive, small, and most importantly: it fits in my brain and I can maintain it. No build step or really any tooling at all.

I do boostrap 5 and htmx. works great

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#313

Post by deaton »

dlisboa wrote: post #65
simonw wrote: post #6

Here's some context on the impact AI had on the Tailwind Labs business model from January: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/pull/2388#is... > But the reality is that 75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business. [...] > Traffic to our docs is down about 40% from early 2023 despite Tailwind being more popular than ever.…

I made this point at the time but Tailwind Labs' business model shouldn't exist. It irks people because they wanna blame AI for it but they were coasting and should be happy it lasted this long. Tailwind's business model existed due to a massive inefficiency in the frontend industry not being able to come to terms with CSS or native components. They surfed the wave of JS frontends becoming ever more complicated. If i…

Finding a massive inefficiency and then finding a way to solve it and make money doing it is basically how the entire economy works.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#314

Post by binary0010 »

autoexec wrote: post #197
binary0010 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had a very successful economic mechanism design for many years. It's one that thousands of businesses have relied on for decades. Create great free product, create rich tutorials and docs, people look them up and you can sell variety of services from there. Then ai companies stole the data, put a $20 pricetag on it and wiped out all those businesses essentially overnight.

If those "variety of services" are worth anything they should remain popular. There are countless ways to advertise them to people. I'm guessing many devs who were regularly browsing their documentation had ad blockers anyway.

Typically here's how it worked:

Company creates a free core product, possibly open source, etc.

Company creates rich help docs and other useful resources.

Customers who use their core free product are frequently engaged with the company and it's helpful resources.

Said company offers additional services such as coursework, cloud services, analytics, etc.

Since customer knows and trusts the core free product, and knows the company is trustworthy, they may be inclined to purchase something.

Now, few coders use these learning resources (ai fetches it for them), they do not know anything about the company and they never engage with the company to see their additional offerings.

Therefore the company now has to advertise by spending heavily on Google/meta/etc. to a cold audience that doesn't even know who they are, because everyone using their system/sdk/library/etc. doesn't know anything about them because ai just steals all their resources and regurgitates it to the coder.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#315

Post by smithcoin »

spiderice wrote: post #222
dawnerd wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s far from dead. All of the AI models struggle with creativity and consistency. There’s always going to be a market for well designed UX.

> There’s always going to be a market for well designed UX Given the past 3 years, I will never understand how people can be so confident making statements like this

The sentiment goes both ways?

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#317

Post by achierius »

nonethewiser wrote: post #274
xixixao wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a poor comment. It starts talking about the business model, but it’s just a “Tailwind shouldn’t exist at all” argument. Clearly it’s a useful tool if it’s used by so many people and companies.

>Clearly it’s a useful tool if it’s used by so many people and companies. Yeah but its not. Hence the huge layoffs. If they don’t want to find another software development job maybe they could work at a New Jersey gas station. New Jersey protects their gas station attendants.

But Tailwind is still being used? It's just being used by AI now.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#318

Post by shermantanktop »

PaulHoule wrote: post #263
joleyj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that “lots of money” needs to be put in perspective when thinking about software that’s used by developers. When you compare the size of the market for these kinds of tools compared to a truly massive market for something like an office suite, it looks pretty puny. Developers are also very fickle and the one constant is change. Sometimes it seems like change for changes sake alone. I’m not saying that any bus…

It’s hard to name a more pathological market than office suites. You have Microsoft which is lackadaisical about the subject, like maybe they think Office is a place to stuff with thoroughly unwanted AI features. The rest of the market is German zealots who spend all day with bash and emacs who lobby legislatures to subject public servants to off-brand office suites and then the public sector unions go on strike to g…

Funny, my opinion is the opposite. Excel is a much better spreadsheet than Word is a word processor or than PowerPoint is a presentation tool.

Of course it’s got quirks and unfortunate relics of its long history, but I reach for it willingly, and I can’t say that about the rest of the Office suite.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#319

Post by colesantiago »

fnwbr wrote: post #316
colesantiago wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of thinking is getting tired, and I don't think anybody cares. Money > Principles 100% every time

money > principles is getting tired

No. it rules everything.

From OSS, to family, health, employees to everything that requires money.

This is how I know you've never been in a leadership position which is why you don't understand this.

If so, why didn't you and pier25 buy Tailwind Labs to save them from being bought by Shopify and Tobi? (who is apparently being called a Nazi by those who hate him)

As they say with this Tailwind situation:

Money talks.

And you're in no position to execute any principles if your business has gone bust.

Re: Shopify acquires Tailwind

#320

Post by hakunin »

bsimpson wrote: post #225
hakunin wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only do front-end dev occasionally, but these are my 3 goto articles that make me lean towards not using Tailwind: 1: https://www.zolkos.com/2025/12/03/vanilla-css-is-all-you-nee... 2: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/subgrid/ 3: https://railsdesigner.com/custom-elements/ (more Rails specific)

It's my primary role. I started using jsxstyle a dozen years ago alongside React and really liked the ability to style my components in situ without breaking browser architecture assumptions. I recently had to help out on a vibe coded project that inherited Tailwind (I think from Figma). It was a short assignment so I didn't dig that deep, but I don't understand the value prop of Tailwind. There was no obvious improv…

A lot of the time the choice comes down to abundance of resources and community support. So if we're comparing tools (e.g. jsxstyle vs tailwind) maybe Tailwind could actually win on those parameters (no actual idea, just guessing based on the number of stars jsxstyle has on Github), but if we're comparing vanilla to [any tool] then vanilla usually takes the cake.
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