> What would be a few, maybe even half dozen, lines of CSS in a separate file, are now shoved into the generated code, and repeated everywhere.

...

> One of the bits of advice Tailwind gives is to use @apply and extract common blobs of CSS into common classes2. > Why bother to even use @apply? Just write the damn CSS

If you take a look at the official Tailwind docs (https://tailwindcss.com/docs/reusing-styles#extracting-compo...) they say:

"If you need to reuse some styles across multiple files, the best strategy is to create a component if you’re using a front-end framework like React, Svelte, or Vue, or a template partial if you’re using a templating language like Blade, ERB, Twig, or Nunjucks. ... While it’s highly recommended that you create proper template partials for more complex components, you can use Tailwind’s @apply directive to extract repeated utility patterns to custom CSS classes when a template partial feels heavy-handed."

So Tailwind recommends the use of components/template-partials as the way to reuse styles (e.g. your styled button HTML with classes goes in `button.html` and you reuse that for each button) because they think reusing styles in the traditional CSS way via classes doesn't scale (https://tailwindcss.com/docs/utility-first).

I know it's trendy to bash modern webdev here but people criticising Tailwind should at least try and understand the Tailwind approach first. Same with comments like "it's just inline styles" - they cover common knee-jerk reactions like this in the docs (https://tailwindcss.com/docs/utility-first#why-not-just-use-...).

You know how it's popular now to prefer composition over inheritance in OOP languages because it scales better? Tailwind is more like that, whereas CSS is more about preferring inheritance via cascading rules. Tailwind advocates their approach scales better to complex custom web designs. If you're just styling basic documents, you're not going to see much benefit.