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Comment by tambourine_man | Hacker News Reader

> Just like I don’t like React I will probably never really like Tailwind.

>But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be a professional and write the best Tailwind code I can if that’s what’s asked of me.

This is something that I can’t understand. Maybe it’s just me, but we’re incredibly fortunate to be in a market with huge demand. It’s not like we live in a React only world.

You can make a pretty good living writing in whatever language, framework, ecosystem you choose. I’m terrible at self promotion and still I manage.

It’s great when what’s fashionable matches your personal taste. It happened to me a few times. But when it doesn’t, it’s pretty fine as well.

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The context is that we're primarily a design company, the front-end is a way to express our designs.

A big reason for me is that I want the bigger group in our company to experiment with several CSS techniques to grow as front-end developers. If I (as a manager) set a constraint on one type of CSS it is difficult to learn more.

As an agency it makes sense to have broad capabilities. I think as a freelancer it's super fine to just constrain yourself to what you like, as you state there is huge demand out there.

It's wonderful to experiment. I wanna give Tailwind (and React) a second try if I find the time.

It's just that the post comes across as resignation, as if these techs are a fact of life.

Some tech is easier to sell than others, depending on your market. If you're an agency chasing startupy clients, for instance, the more technical people on the other side of the table want to hear that you're going to use tech that they think will look good on their résumés and/or enable them to easily hire startup-type developers, so making sales means choosing some subset of that tech that will make them nod in agreement when you name-drop it, and also enables you to deliver working software efficiently—even if you think there are better tools for the job. For several years this has meant talking about how much your teams just looooove React (whether they actually do is irrelevant).

Same holds for ordinary jobs. Depending on the kinds of jobs you want, it can be a reasonable choice to settle on tech you don't really like, just because the hiring market's hot for that tech, so it's much easier to get hired and/or to command a higher salary.

>Depending on the kinds of jobs you want…

That's the thing. If you enjoy the tech, you can make a great living write the code you love. If the start-up name-droping life style is more important to you, than sure, go for it, just don't complain that the market demands XYZ.

I think you're underestimating the degree to which fashion imposes de facto requirements on day-to-day working conditions.

It's non-trivial to pick up a front-end/full-stack engineering position at this point without having committed to React-specific development. Even knowing a runner-up (Angular, Vue, Svelte, maybe Ember) can put you on the bottom side of probabilities, and not having bought into any big-name framework will likely change your chances by an order of magnitude.

And fashion mismatches are often enough about more than aesthetics -- they're often about the kinds of problems you're well-equipped to regularly solve.

Some fashions build up enough momentum that anyone who doesn't want to solve the problems it introduces (or use its proposed solutions to existing problems) is justified in being worried that the fashion will choose them.

> It's non-trivial to pick up a front-end/full-stack engineering position at this point without having committed to React-specific development

I’m speaking from experience. I write PHP, jQuery and plain CSS. There’s plenty of market. Never felt React (or Angular, Ember, Backbone) where worth the trouble. Same for SASS, Typescript, WebPack. So I don’t use it. And it’s fine.

There’s of course job opportunities for a specific tech. Just don’t get those if you dislike them. There are plenty others.

Our industry is indeed much more fashion driven than it should for a field that aspires to be a hard science. But it is also so freaking huge that even niches can support a lot of people.

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