Tailwind Is A Technical Debt: Why Component-Based CSS Leaves It Behind

Tailwind was a clever hack in 2017 when web development meant bloated HTML, CSS and JS. Global stylesheet and no structure, just a mess. Component based frameworks, like React, Vue and Angular moved development to higher level of abstraction. In this architecture Tailwind isn’t helpful, it’s a technical debt. Here’s why writing scoped, semantic CSS is better

Lately my thoughts are around CSS and Tailwind. Especially, what is wrong with Tailwind that makes it so hard to use it for high fidelity designs. So jump on the train of design development considerations.

I like to go into the source of truth, and in case Tailwind, it’s benefits are outlined in the article by Adam Wathan from August 7, 2017. Summarizing his article these are the reasons why he thinks Tailwind is better than CSS:

• Even CSS is coupled with HTML, so inlining utility classes in HTML is ok
• Naming CSS classes is hard and repetitive
• Different components have same styles, but it’s hard to reuse them with CSS