Where have you heard that argument? That is absolutely bonkers. Why didn't they just use css as intended and collect all these inline styles into generic classes? Or turn on gzip-compression?
I worked in an org at Yahoo that required all development to use Atomic, and that was essentially the reasoning as presented. The Atomic authors put a lot of effort [1] put into proving the size point, enough that it was pretty difficult to argue with. The stylistic issues were sort of swept aside; less size == faster page loads == more revenue.
If you believe the size argument, and care more about short term revenue over developer productivity or happiness, it makes sense, I guess.
If you believe the size argument, and care more about short term revenue over developer productivity or happiness, it makes sense, I guess.
[1] https://acss.io/frequently-asked-questions.html#what-are-the...