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Comment by Wolfr_ | Hacker News Reader

I'll try and clarify what I mean here. Tailwind seems to appeal to devs who feel they never fully grasped CSS + design.

Because it provides a copy-pastable subset of reliable classes where you end result will look good.

As a company we are often hired to fill a knowledge gap (exactly in design and front-end). The nature of agency work is to leave a deliverable for the client to work with.

My idea is that when the project is over and the design/front-end gap still exists in the team, perhaps it is better to leave something more manipulatable (I used the word malleable originally).

I think with the great docs that Tailwind has it might be easier for someone who is not a front-end dev to manipulate a `<div class="p-4">` to `<div class="p-3">` than to come across a BEM/ITCSS component, written in SCSS* where you have to understand much more concepts to manipulate it skillfully.

*(our preferred stack really)

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Counter-example: I’ve been building with CSS for about 20 years, and am very competent with it, but I’m a fan of the paradigm of atomic styles and eschewing the cascade. I don’t particularly love Tailwind, but a lot of the ideas and reasoning behind it are rock solid.

We need to move past the rhetoric of “Tailwind is for people who don’t know CSS”, when it’s only true in a correlatory sense because the majority of tech is always going to be newcomers. People who are CSS experts are just as capable of concluding that these newer paradigms are worth investing their time in.

So are we supposed to unlearn CSS because we want to make sure that unskilled people can take over the project?

I believe that quick deliverable you mention, will become a big burden for that client in some future.

I saw already multiple projects where both Tailwind and regular CSS are used. This seems like unavoidable, since Tailwind looks like easy-peasy, but it actually can't be understood and without understanding CSS in the first place. Maintaining this kind of mix must be fun...

It's kind of sad that not-learning is hyped over mastering.

Thanks.

What I needed today is for a rando on the internet to call me stupid, a dev who doesn't fully grasp CSS + design.

I use tailwindcss and so do other devs. Many of those devs are better than me and you.

Instead of assuming that everyone who disagrees with your choices is stupid, maybe reflect on popularity of tailwindcss and assume, in an Ockham's Razor kind of way, that it's a good technology. Even if it's not a technology that you personally want to use.

That went bad quickly! You are putting words in the mouth of the original comments for no reason. "a dev who doesn't fully grasp CSS + design" does not mean a stupid dev; it can be a dev who decides that he doesn't need to fully grasp CSS + design to do a great job. Why is that weird that the owner of an App design service agency prefers pure CSS over a library?

I was in no way talking about you, I was talking about backend devs in general who are thankful for something like Tailwind.

Just like I, a front-end dev + designer am thankful for something like Firebase, because my backend skills are fairly nonexistent.

yes this is all rooted/connected to the truth that the huge influx of dev/engineer-centric approach to everything web design has basically ruined/messed up front-end for the 5+ years

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