Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
jakelazaroff.com
Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
1–10 of 391 posts
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#2_All_ abstractions are leaky, but some are helpful. For me, as an unwilling and inept CSS dev working on small low-budget projects, Tailwind is helpful because it lets me put all styling information in one place.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#3Tailwind is not an abstraction, it's shorthand. It saves you several bytes in the source, saves seconds of typing, and in return rewards you with a massive headache.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#4> Implementing any sort of 3D design requires breaking out of Tailwind.
Yes? It's not meant to solve 100% of your css tasks, for me it's more like 90%.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#5> You still need to know CSS.
Yes. Tailwind CSS is just CSS:
> A utility-first CSS framework
It is not a leaky abstraction, because it isn't an abstraction. It's a only a special syntax for applying predefined blocks of CSS to HTML elements.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#6Tailwind has made building components in React an absolute joy for me.
I don't need to scroll up to find my css-in-js definitions, I don't need to change windows to find the CSS modules, it's all there, in one place.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#7You either use a generic CSS or a generic HTML.
Everybody who picks Tailwind decides to use a generic CSS and a specific HTML.
I like the old school approach of having a clean and semantically correct HTML without any styling information. And then implement the "theme(s)" in CSS.
Makes just more sense to me and goes along with the idea of CSS - separating style and content.
But the recent adoption of tailwind make me think a lot.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#8Agree 100%. I wish there was a lightweight utility framework that is truly just shorthand, i.e. if I know the CSS property I can predict what the class name would be. With Tailwind it's all arbitrary
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#9This feels like the wrong way to think about tailwind.
Every other UI framework or library that I’ve used felt like leaky abstractions. You always have to learn both how the library works AND how css works.
Tailwind isn’t even an abstraction, it’s just a layer of convenience to be used where helpful and ignored where not. The thing I love about Tailwind is that it feels like CSS. In fact, I feel like I know CSS better for having used Tailwind.
Re: Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
#10> It's an abstraction that actively makes the experience worse
I don't understand any sort of DX/UX that requires horizontal scrolling.
It is very rare that a DX/UX wouldn't be made better by designing it smartly to scroll vertically instead.