Unpopular web dev opinion: I don't like Tailwind CSS too much. Opinions below.

I broke my teeth on it for a small site I was paid to write, and while it works pretty well in general I really don't like how busy the HTML can become with it. Additionally, while most stuff... 1/

...that I needed for styling was provided by the framework, there were a few notable times where I had to drop into the CSS to fill in bits that the framework simply didn't implement. It worked, but having tons of Tailwind classes plus a custom class just felt really out of... 2/

...place to me. The big offenders were rendered Markdown content from the SSG that I couldn't add classes to directly, as well as some missing grid sizing utilities using fr units, but there were other places as well. Repetition was also a problem, and I know they say... 3/

..."oh just drop down into CSS with @apply" but that really just feels to me like a half measure. I thought the goal was to keep all of your styling in one place, no? Custom components would be a good solution (note: I wasn't using React for this project), but if you have... 4/

...components that differ slightly from each other or need utility classes to function right in certain spots, it becomes harder to manage those styles.

Maybe this is a stupid idea, but if I use it again for another project I might just use @apply only so I can reap most... 5/

...of the benefits of it while keeping my HTML clean and have everything consolidated in their respective places. It'd probably lead to some gnarly selector chains in the generated CSS, but maybe the compiler will optimize those as necessary. I don't know. 6/

Honestly I don't know where I wanted to go with this thread. I think the project is a good idea conceptually, I just don't like the implementation. Maybe it just isn't for me, I dunno.

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