[dmitriid]

It gives you a consistent design system with sensible defaults and easy-to-use (and rather memorable or easy to deduce) utility classes.

Unlike the yet-another umpteenth bespoke `.card-header__buttons .card-header__button--secondary` that no one can remember and create an umpteenth+1

Tailwind works great when your site/app is a collection of components

[atsjie]

`.card-header__buttons` that example makes no sense unless you use global CSS/SASS, which very few projects do anymore. Component CSS/SCSS or CSS-in-JS are very common which resolve this scoping problem.

So why bother with a DSL like Tailwind over Component CSS/SCSS for example?

[dmitriid]

How do you enforce consistency in CSS-in-JS? Paddings, margins, sizes, colors?

Everywhere I've seen CSS-in-JS used, everywhere it's people busy writing bespoke styles in every file.

[satvikpendem]

By having a style guide with variants, StitchesJS pioneered this but there are others like Vanilla-Extract. With TypeScript, you can then enforce that only a certain variant can be used with a certain component at compile time, basically making sure that your design style guide gets mapped 1:1 to your code.

https://stitches.dev/

[dmitriid]

Hm. I see the same CSS-in-JS with a sprinkle of string interpolation for some variables :)

I may run into the same issues as the other CSS-in-JS solutions (I only encountered stitch once, and not for a long period of time)

[satvikpendem]

Unlike other CSS-in-JS though, the way it's made, via object properties, enforces compliance to the design system. In things like styled-components, it doesn't.

Doubly so when using TypeScript, as with Vanilla-Extract: https://vanilla-extract.style

[dmitriid]

> the way it's made, via object properties, enforces compliance to the design system.

The link literally has this:

``` export const className = style({ display: 'flex', flexDirection: 'column', selectors: { '&:nth-child(2n)': { background: 'aliceblue' } }, '@media': { 'screen and (min-width: 768px)': { flexDirection: 'row' } } }); ```

Which is indistinguishable from any other CSS-in-JS which has hundreds of these one-off things scattered everywhere. With a theme somewhere exposing another hundred or so variables of varing quality. And all these solutions basically converge on Tailwind (or other utility-first CSS approaches):

``` export const hero = style({ backgroundColor: vars.color.brandd, color: vars.color.white, padding: vars.space.large }); ```

is nothing more than `bg-brand color-white p-4`

But TypeScript support is definitely nice.

[atsjie]

> How do you enforce consistency in CSS-in-JS? Paddings, margins, sizes, colors? JavaScript variables, css variables? Both can be used. It's pretty trivial tbh.

[postalrat]

That's the same problem I see with tailwind.

I prefer a global set of styles and more specific selectors to override styles where needed. It may not work well on projects with many teams but for the projects I typically work on it's fine.

[dmitriid]

> That's the same problem I see with tailwind.

The thing with Tailwinf is that it already has a decent design syste encoded in its utility classes. It's very easy to slap a p-2 for a standardized padding than trying to remember what it was when you write the next component with `{ padding: 2 2 2 2 }`

> I prefer a global set of styles and more specific selectors to override styles where needed.

That's kinda what I mean. In all projects I've seen you have a global stylesheet with a bunch of classes that no one remembers, and hundreds of one-ofs in every component either reimplementing stuff from scratch or serving as an `!important` of sorts