[robmerki]

It's because Tailwind looks good. It has well designed defaults & the documentation makes it look beautiful. I've used Tachyons before & enjoyed it, but it looks ugly in comparison.

If you're picking a framework that will eventually be used by developers who might not have any design skills, which would you prefer?

Tachyons shadows: https://tachyons.io/docs/themes/box-shadow/

Tailwind shadows: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/box-shadow

Tachyons colors: http://tachyons.io/docs/themes/skins/

Tailwind colors: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/customizing-colors

Even something like floats look better in Tailwind documentation despite being the same one line of CSS.

Tachyons floats: http://tachyons.io/docs/layout/floats/

Tailwind floats: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/float

Part of it is marketing and part of it is the novelty of using inline utility classes, but none of this explosive growth happens without a deep focus on design at every stage.

Documentation, defaults, examples, and color palettes all matter.

This is somewhat apples to oranges, but look at Bootstraps' navbar example page versus Tailwind's (paid) examples. One is a cluttered mess, the other is a carefully designed list.

Bootstrap 5 navbars: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.1/examples/headers/

TailwindUI navbars: https://tailwindui.com/components/application-ui/navigation/...

[omnimus]

TailwindUI is not great comparison. Its a commercial product - bunch of snippets. You could build pretty similar thing with tachyons by replacing the class names to tachyons version.

I like tachyons looks more than tailwind but you can change tailwind using config to look exactly like tachyons but you cant turn tachyons into looking like tailwind.

So i use tailwind.

[bryanrasmussen]

based on just opening the first two links - if I was picking a framework that will eventually have to handle accessibility issues like wcag contrast rules I think I might say take that tachyons stuff.

although probably making a decision like that based on how the documentation for the framework looks isn't actually reasonable.

[Aeolun]

> making a decision like that based on how the documentation for the framework looks isn't actually reasonable

How much effort someone puts into their documentation tells me a lot about how much effort they put into the product in general, and user-friendliness in particular.

[colejohnson66]

Not really.

Single developer projects tend to put more effort into the code than the documentation, but that doesn’t mean the product isn’t good.

Startups can afford to put massive amounts into documentation and marketing while having a terrible product.

And big businesses can be anything.

[yurishimo]

Are you implying Tailwind is operating as the traditional startup? It's the exact opposite. Fully profitable right now with 8+ employees and what I would assume is tons of the money in the bank having listened to tons of interviews by Adam Wathan.

The Tailwind team is just insanely talented and committed to quality at every level. Not everything is a SV game of marketing and smoke screens.

[colejohnson66]

> Are you implying Tailwind is operating as the traditional startup?

No. I’m simply saying that the quality of a website does not indicate quality of the product being shown. The only thing that will indicate if a product is good or not is testing it.

Tailwind obviously has great marketing and a great developer base, but not everything is the same.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

I think this hits the nail on the head. Tachyons out of the box looks really ugly whereas Tailwind out of the box looks far cooler.