The author of this article says “I’m confused, to say the least”

I’ll be more aggressive: it appears to me that the creator of Tailwind wants to rub shoulders with the other devs who’ve discovered that wearing a blazer and acting as if your tool is the best thing for the web, will not be questioned.

You will be loved.
You will be funded.
The web will disintegrate.

The slides that the author has shared in the post are shocking to me. Keynote type of bullshit where you can say anything if you’re on stage and us devs will be like 😍 yes you’re right, semantics in CSS IS fucking terrible

https://nuejs.org/blog/tailwind-misinformation-engine/

Thanks to (@toastal for sharing)

@pikesley

I had assumed that it couldn’t be an actual example from the docs. It must be the author just writing the worst example he could to prove a point.

But no. I am horrified.

@toastal

@james @pikesley

Wow, same here, and that’s just a train wreck. How do people buy into shit like this?

I also note that “tailwind” could be a euphemism for a fart.

@Floppy @james @pikesley any time I’ve looked at Tailwind I’ve felt the same way. There’s *something* there, but it feels like they went halfway by introducing a bunch of reusable classes and then stopped before adding the pre-processor that’s so obviously needed to translate .callout to a class incorporating .x-large, .float-left, .padding-2 and so on.

@jon @Floppy @pikesley

So I think Tailwind has a place as “I need to make a quick demo or mockup”. Learn the syntax, use someone else’s component libray, no need to think about design.

But also you can just write some
CSS. It’s not slower.

@jon @Floppy @pikesley

Tailwind is making me miss bootstrap. anyone else?

@james @jon @Floppy @pikesley My POV is that it comes in useful when you need to change things

Because its very easy to change a class called “primary” and break unexpected bits of your UI

@james @Floppy @pikesley this is very true, and typically what I’ll do now because it’s easier to make up a few classes than learn an entire framework. I just can’t help thinking there must be *something* to it for so many people to jump on it, it can’t all just be that Tailwind is the fashionable thing.

@jon @Floppy @pikesley

Also Tailwind would go up in my estimate if they at least used full words for things. They massively increase the overhead of learning and understanding what you’re reading and writing because of their absolutely bullshit shorthand which is definitely just for the illusion of speed. Less time timing but now double timing remembering if it’s ‘space-y-4’ or ‘y-space-4’

If only CSS had its own shorthand for that :/

Oh wait

padding: 4px 0

Or how about

padding-block: 4px 0

And now you can support more all the writing modes, LTR etc using logical properties!

@jon @Floppy @james "there must be *something* to it for so many people to jump on it" a lot of people bought NFTs Jon

@james @Floppy @jon @pikesley And yes you can avoid this by high levels of discipline but in practice people make quick hacks…

@erincandescent @jon @Floppy @pikesley @james How does this principle *not* apply to changing Tailwind classes?

@heydon @jon @Floppy @pikesley @james because you never modify the tailwind css file itself?

@erincandescent @jon @Floppy @pikesley @james I don't follow. Everyone who uses Tailwind gets the same styles?

@erincandescent @Floppy @jon @pikesley

For an individuals sure, but one would hope the Tech Industry™️ as in, large teams of product devs, would do code reviews and have standards.

…

…

pls

@james @erincandescent @Floppy @pikesley in my experience code review of CSS is… lacking outside of dedicated frontend teams, and sadly the vast majority of teams are the mythical Full Stack team, which in practice tends to mean a bunch of backend people begrudgingly dealing with Javascript and CSS. At least we’re not using tables full of carefully sliced images anymore I guess.

@jon @erincandescent @Floppy @pikesley

My team is full stack, but in the opposite direction :) and I basically am full stack in that I can do everything given enough time, and just do whatever is needed (front, back, infra) on any given day. Which is why I am someone who was hired as a front ended for the first time (I’ve never had that as a title or been siloed by title before) for this job and have spent the last theee months in Java and Infrastructure land. I am not coherent in either of these things but have apparently been successful with the weight of
an entire product launch on my shoulders

I hate the whole perception of mythical full stack tbh. If those backenders can’t be bothered to do a proper code review then that’s on them and I’ll assume their backend code is similarly sloppy!

@james @jon @Floppy @pikesley tbh from what I can gather a lot of the challenge come from stuff like marketing sites where you end up with lots of one-off widgets and such and so the challenge. more than anything, is remembering the use of class=”primary” on an obscure page on your website or such