> it's an optimized way to do inline styles for component based architectures, because it turns out inline-styles are actually a pretty good way to style re-usable components

Yeah, I also understand Tailwind as inline-styles without it's problems:

* it provides less choices (instead of 256*3 colors you have limited choices)

* classes are (a lot) faster than inline styles in most browsers

* has access to features that inline styles can't (e.g. media queries)