Tailwind is the most counterintuitive yet obvious-in-hindsight CSS tool (or of any class - no pun intended) I've worked with.
I know the general sentiment towards Tailwind is "I spent years getting my separation of concerns with HTML/CSS down, but now you're telling me all that is backwards and CSS Zen Garden is blasphemy?" I was in the same boat. Tailwind just felt wrong, and with 15+ years of experience, I've come to trust my intuition. After watching several videos, and reading all the canonical articles on Tailwind, I still wasn't convinced this was anything more than a fad full of bad practices.
But the one thing I'll let trump my intuition is curiosity. So I used Tailwind on a medium-sized project for a couple months and was blown away by the productivity and maintainability. It took using it for a couple weeks to "get it". I had a positive ROI on this project, even considering the learning curve!
If you still think "Tailwind feels wrong, what am I missing?" I'd suggest reflecting on the following:
1) You probably haven't actually delved into Tailwind on a non-trivial project. I understand learning a new framework isn't a trivial undertaking, but it's the only thing standing in your way of discovering your "truth".
2) If you feel Tailwind is too much like inline styles, think of the difference between the infinite possibilities of strings defining a "type" vs. a discrete enum type. Tailwind classes are the enum type values.
3) If you're struggling to abstract reusable higher-level classes/components, the problem might actually be with inconsistent and non-modular design, not CSS tooling. If every page or section is a "unique work of art" then you may have poor UX/design.
I know the general sentiment towards Tailwind is "I spent years getting my separation of concerns with HTML/CSS down, but now you're telling me all that is backwards and CSS Zen Garden is blasphemy?" I was in the same boat. Tailwind just felt wrong, and with 15+ years of experience, I've come to trust my intuition. After watching several videos, and reading all the canonical articles on Tailwind, I still wasn't convinced this was anything more than a fad full of bad practices.
But the one thing I'll let trump my intuition is curiosity. So I used Tailwind on a medium-sized project for a couple months and was blown away by the productivity and maintainability. It took using it for a couple weeks to "get it". I had a positive ROI on this project, even considering the learning curve!
If you still think "Tailwind feels wrong, what am I missing?" I'd suggest reflecting on the following:
1) You probably haven't actually delved into Tailwind on a non-trivial project. I understand learning a new framework isn't a trivial undertaking, but it's the only thing standing in your way of discovering your "truth".
2) If you feel Tailwind is too much like inline styles, think of the difference between the infinite possibilities of strings defining a "type" vs. a discrete enum type. Tailwind classes are the enum type values.
3) If you're struggling to abstract reusable higher-level classes/components, the problem might actually be with inconsistent and non-modular design, not CSS tooling. If every page or section is a "unique work of art" then you may have poor UX/design.