In a previous post, I talked about TailwindCSS, and my opinion on why it shouldn't be used. Admittedly, I took a rather strong stance - in this article, I will take a more objective view and explain why I think about TailwindCSS this way.
Before I get into it, thanks to everyone who commented on the last one - it got pretty heated, but I think a lot of great points were brought up, and it's nice to see diversity in the web development space.
The Tailwind Way
Underneath the raw code and syntax of Tailwind CSS, looking back to its foundations, Tailwind is built on the principle that semantic CSS is unreasonable to implement.
Adam Wathan, the creator of Tailwind, even directly says so, right on tailwindcss.com. That's why TailwindCSS was created - a way to focus on the actual styling and appearance, rather than the structure and the thinking of the design.
This is one way of thinking, and there's nothing "wrong" with this approach - rather, it depends on your perspective.
Semantic CSS and Separation of Concerns
Opposing Tailwind's method is the idea of Semantic CSS and Separation of Concerns. Semantic CSS suggests carefully structuring CSS to design your projects, and Separation of Concerns is the idea that every part of your website, from design to content to programming, should be developed separately.
We can almost divide the web ecosystem into two with these ways of thinking - on the one hand, you have technologies like JSX and TailwindCSS, focusing on quick, efficient, and powerful ways to build apps.
On the other, we have tools like Svelte and Style, which encourage different thinking for different parts of your projects, and a more structured approach.
Tero Piirainen, creator of Nue, talks about this in his blog post, which I highly recommend you read (although keep in mind that he supports semantic CSS over Tailwind).
Why I don't like Tailwind
In the last article, I talked about why you shouldn't use Tailwind, and things got pretty murky, so I'll clear things up.
Personally, I believe in an approach where you keep your styles separate from your content since it makes me think more about my content and then focus separately on how it should look.
There's also just the objective facts of Tailwind not being native to browsers, and taking up space in markup.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Tailwind and Semantic CSS bring forth two different, both valid, ways of thinking. They're both great ways to build apps and while I believe more in Semantic CSS, it depends on your perspective.
Maybe I'm just making a big deal out of nothing, and Tailwind and CSS are just two different syntaxes for doing the same thing. But I think it's pretty interesting how apps develop with them, and I hope everybody finds a way to style their app in a away that they like.
See you in the next one :)
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