I am a software engineer for sixteen years, and Tailwind didn't come to me as a surprise. After Redux, React and BEM it is very hard to surprise me.

Not every solution is there to solve an engineering problem. Tailwind is a great example. It does not provide any engineering value. But it makes toolchain more complicated, complicates styling the app, because you have to convert units again, you have to learn Tailwind aliases, you have to learn project aliases, you have to know what values are accepted in the project and what not.

So what is it for? Tailwind is a tool to build know-how siloes. To make it harder for developers to join or take over the work in a project. It is the only reason it is used, and sadly it is one of the most repelling examples of elitism in coding.