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by e12e 1379 days ago
> Assume that I know _nothing_ about Tailwind, sell it to me. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Tailwind removes (or wilfully ignores) the "cascading" from css. It breaks all good, old css design patterns on purpose - in favor of "widget-level" styling.

It also effectivly builds its own (extendable) style language via named classes, ending up somewhere between "semantic" and "micro-styling" - but allowing for refactoring as needed. It reduces CSS to an implementation detail.

For example, in "Agile Web Development With Rails 7"[1], a number of form fields are initially styled as:

   ... class="block   shadow   rounded-md   border   border-green-400
       outline-none  px-3   py-2   mt-2   w-full " 
Later reactored to:

  ... class="input-field" via tailwind:


     .input-field {  @apply 

         block   shadow   rounded-md  
        border   border-green-400   outline-none 
         px-3   py-2   mt-2   w-full 

    }
On the surface similar to defining a css class - but effectively scoped to your own code.

In a small project, where you're publishing documents - tailwind might not be great - but in a large project, with many widgets it is a good fit.

Similar to how "movable code" (js on the client) might be a better fit than REST for web applications (as opposed to web pages).

[1] https://pragprog.com/titles/rails7/agile-web-development-wit...