[umut]

A viable alternative to all this is using tailwind, can't recommend it highly enough. When you pass the initial period where you feel like you're repeating yourself (1h max) it takes the nervousness out of your CSSing, it feels more like coding and less like schmoozing..

Just a happy user

[ekzy]

I like tailwind too but it's not an alternative to learning CSS. You still need to know CSS to be able to use tailwind

[domano]

I agree with your first sentence, but not with your second.

For my own homepage i did not write a single line of css.

I am very, very bad with CSS and can't wrap my head around it, but tailwind allowed me to create a very pretty, responsive homepage with very high lighthouse scores (bought tailwind UI too).

[deergomoo]

> I am very, very bad with CSS and can't wrap my head around it, but tailwind allowed me to create a very pretty, responsive homepage

Congrats, you now know CSS! It sounds like I'm joking but honestly, Tailwind is essentially composable shorthand for CSS with a design system applied. If you grok Tailwind, you understand the concepts of CSS, you just might not know the full names for all the properties and values.

[domano]

Yes, but when i try to apply this knowledge i fail every time.

I do unterstand the basic ideas behind CSS, but is just cant apply it. Tailwind allowed me to apply it.

If i could, i would prefer to write CSS! After 10 years i have given up though.

[dmitriid]

That's the thing about Tailwind. It's (almost) the right abstraction.

Personal anecdote, I understood how flexbox works only after using Tailwind for a personal project.

[umut]

Yes, very true.. But you just don't need to maintain the exploding specificity hell, instead use a declarative workflow, which is significantly easier to reason about.

[Oddskar]

This is like saying an alternative to learning how to cook is to sustain yourself on takeaway.

Tailwind might be nice, but most projects will require in-depth knowledge about CSS.

[nailer]

People absolutely do use tailwind as an alternative to understanding CSS. Having seen and worked on projects in tailwind, I feel like that's it's primary purpose.

Go on Twitter and look at the Tailwind community - they see CSS as a doomed, awful language and Tailwind as the thing that makes it pleasant. They're not CSS developers. They're people actively trying to avoid being CSS developers.

[kklisura]

Learning any CSS library is not alternative to learning CSS itself.

[MonaroVXR]

It's weird reading ycombinator and the persons above you says something else.

[blacktriangle]

I know it's been said before, but no Tailwind does not replace CSS.

Tailwind replaces having to come up with a new semantic class name every time you need to style an element only to realize the actual semantics you picked were completely wrong.

Tailwind is basically a cleaner way to do everything as inline styles.

[Ashanmaril]

> Tailwind is basically a cleaner way to do everything as inline styles.

I'd say that's underselling it. For one thing it keeps you within a design system. By default you're given spacing that works in increments of 0.25rem, a handful of colors, etc to work with (which can be replaced/extended) so you have to go out of your way to break the design system that's in place.

Also inline styles don't allow for hover, focus, @media, etc. Which were always a pain in the ass with normal CSS anyway. Using Tailwind was the first time I didn't find writing a responsive UI to be a giant hassle. You just design for mobile and then for anything that needs to change on bigger screens you put a sm: or lg: or whatever breakpoint style and you're done.

[nailer]

Tailwind isn't quite inline styles (technical details) but yes, it replaces having to name 'login-box' with a copypasted set of styles that you can't change easily without massive regex work.

[blacktriangle]

Until somebody has another similar box so they reuse login-box a bunch in your application, then you realize that they actually need to be customized and have to tear it all apart.

Tailwind doesn't make you copy and paste, it moves the reuse of styles out of CSS which sucks at managing reuse into whatever HTML building system which likely has some concept of reusable views.

[nailer]

> Until somebody has another similar box so they reuse login-box a bunch in your application

Then they make `.box` and include it as a mixin. Like CSS developers have done for a decade (and which tailwind itself does using PostCSS)

> Tailwind doesn't make you copy and paste

Yes it does. Moving all styles into individual elements without reuse is copy and paste.

[deergomoo]

> Yes it does. Moving all styles into individual elements without reuse is copy and paste

Tailwind all but assumes you will be using something that allows you to extract HTML into components, be that something like React or Vue, or classic partials in a server-side templating language like Twig. You reuse the entire component, rather than just the CSS, which IMO is far better aligned with how apps are actually built.

So no, using Tailwind classes is no more copy pasting than typing CSS in full into a separate stylesheet is copy pasting.

[nailer]

You’re misunderstanding the relationship between components and styles.

Login box and messages are separate components, but they share padding metrics, border styles, a palette, etc.

Have you used tailwind before?

[hu3]

This is like saying that learning JQuery is an alternative to learning JavaScript.

[mkoryak]

Except that learning JQuery is an alternative to learning the native javascript DOM API.

[hu3]

DOM API? perhaps

JavaScript? no

[kumarvvr]

I really love it, as it provides 1 layer of semantic abstraction over raw css, meaning, it's easier on the mind, very useful for frameworks like React / Angular / Blazor / Vue.

There is a learning curve, but if you assimilate the language, by doing a project or two, you won't have to even look at the documentation for doing your designs.

[yewenjie]

I like Tailwind so much. I wonder if there is a checklist of CSS things for common components such as buttons so that I can just follow that and get everything done with Tailwind without thinking much.

[iudqnolq]

Tailwind UI is the paid version, Tailwind components the free version (has some gems, but irregular quality and not a consistent design system)

[baxuz]

No.

[butt__hugger]

Don't use Tailwind, it's garbage.