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Comment by deliriumchn | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest here, after working with tailwind for 7 months I really hate this piece of tech and really regret picking this company.

I thought it wouldn't be a big deal but after seeing unnecessary long walls of class names I'm really tired. Anything other than basic styling is an absolute pain with tailwind and I don't understand why /my company specifically/ can't just use typestyle/styled-components/css modules to separate walls of text from components. With time, I degraded to the point I where I use classnames library just to split longer class string into 3-4 smaller ones so I can split the component into multiple rows to make it look better

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interesting take! I started using tailwind with the classnames library early on and found it to be a really nice fit for my purposes. Also very interested in more tailwind-specific tools like tw-classed[1]

[1]: https://tw-classed.vercel.app/

If you dislike walls of class names, you could consider using Tachyon's style abbreviations like we do in Truss:

https://github.com/homebound-team/truss

From that link:

`<div css={Css.mx2.black.ifSm.mx1.$}>...</div>;`

That must be one of the most horrid things I've ever seen done to CSS.

Yep, that looks like what a few seconds of my vim typing looks like but tossed into source code. Ill take the wall of tailwind any day over that.

You're not wrong re vim. :-)

Definitely use whatever you like, but just like vim bindings, which look "omg wtf" to newbies but then become "cannot live without" once you learn them, once you learn the Tachyons-style abbreviations, I/we find that they fade into the background/become 2nd nature, and the succinctness ROI is worth it.

But happy to have you disagree/stick with TW.

I enjoy using tailwind, but I've only used it for side projects. Not sure if I'd use it for productionbfor the wall of class names issue you've mentioned. It can also be a big pull to swallow for many people, my professional recommendation is that almost always fimilar technology is better for devs.

The goal of tailwind is the DX, and it seems to only acheive that with people that enjoy it. I know the statement seems obvious, but there are instances where you don't like a language or a framework, but it doesn't fight against you hence why I consider that a good DX.

I have the same thought. Bootstrap is still my favorite choice.

Yeah, I used Bootstrap for a long time, and got used to how it works.

I wanted to like Tailwind, but it seems a bit disingenuous. It's like using inline style tags, just with shorter names.

From time to time I've made an effort to learn how CSS works, but after a while I forget the details. It's more productive if I can browse a catalogue of visual examples, with concise markup that is easy to copy and paste.

Bulma seems like the more "modern" take on Bootstrap: https://bulma.io/

If you like styled components, you can use this in a similar way, applying tailwind classes instead of CSS: https://www.npmjs.com/package/tailwind-styled-components

I like that it helps reduce the walls of class names since the classes are on their own lines in the tailwind styled component.

I do dislike long walls of classes as well. However, I'm yet to find an alternative that offers the same benefits Tailwind CSS offers without such compromises.

Wrote about Vanilla-Extract shortcomings here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793944

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