Comment by akio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akio | Hacker News Reader

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> I question that your definition of "real project" even included a team with design chops.

Do you believe that

The New York Times (2023): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/nytimes

Shopify (2023): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/shopify

OpenAI (2023): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/openai

GitHub (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/github

The Verge (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/the-verge

Google (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/google-io-2022

Microsoft (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/dotnet

Netflix (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/netflix

Mashable (2022): https://tailwindcss.com/showcase/mashable

don't have teams with "design chops"?

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Anecdotally, I can tell you that Tailwind is heavily favored by shiny designery startups. Many of the best designed websites these days are built with Tailwind, and design-oriented engineers are reaching for it first.

Back in 2018 I was arguing against utility classes and vetoing their use in projects I was involved with in favor of thoughtfully architected SCSS. By now in 2023 it's clear Tailwind has earned its place in high-end UI development.

Nice list. Did you actually look at those sites?

Your first example implies "The New York Times" uses Tailwind. Besides that being hilarious, you click the link and immediately see there is a big subheading "Events"

I have never heard of NYT "Events", so I checked out their page:

https://www.nytimes.com/events

> Do you believe that [The New York Times Events doesn't] have teams with "design chops"?

Yes, yes I do.

Not really going to bother with the rest, you're joking if you think these top corps meaningfully rely on this 2-year-old CSS framework. I exactly believe that you're linking me to things thrown together quickly by a resource-strapped team, the "Events" example merely affirmed it

Edit: I sort of bothered

* GitHub Next - splash page

* Shopify - marketing page

* Google IO - marketing page

* Microsoft .NET - marketing page

* Netflix Global Top 10 - marketing page

* New York Times Events - extremely basic

* OpenAI - Attention grabber, but... the homepage didn't even use full width of nor center content in my 1440p display. Not exactly a UI-driven success

* Mashable, The Verge - Pretty bad websites.

This is my point. People use Tailwind to slap together something good looking and simple. They don't use it to build applications because you make your own design system for applications.

> They don't use it to build applications because you make your own design system for applications.

Some examples of SaaS companies that use Tailwind on the application side are PlanetScale, Fly.io, Lemon Squeezy, and Supabase.

I agree. The main uses of Tailwind are people making template-based pages, or putting up informational offerings in front of service-oriented businesses which give people APIs to build their own apps on.

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