Equivalently, my first impression of HTMX is that I kind of hate it. But I could see it being similar to Tailwind, where you just need to try it out and then it'll click. Is that fair to say?
The other part is that I'm trying to simply "fix HTML", and I believe HTMX is pretty great. I'm taking a different approach as I have a reactive backend, and I can make the HTML simply be a template of a streaming JSON object. It's like mustache with reactive data binding.
I'm enjoying, but I'm not a consultancy so I don't need to push the framework for every usecase.
Another big advantage of the Tailwind approach is that you can copy any component you see on the web, paste it in your project, and it will look the same (unless custom classes are used). No need to hunt down and adapt the whole cascade of styles for each tag.
In that sense, Tailwind has some of the earlier-Internet charm where you learned by seeing what others were doing.
If you’re in a scenario where you’re tasked with building out UI, but don’t have design or FE skills, my recommendation would be something like bootstrap or MUI.
Maybe it's not for everyone, but it really is worth a try, with an open mind.