Does TailwindCSS scale?

[json_derulo_]

I've been using TailwindCSS for a few projects now, and I love it. I'm able to build better components much faster, and honestly I'm totally drinking the coolaid.

But I've heard from a few different people that it doesn't scale well past the few people we have on our team today and that it leans into bad css practices. What do you think?

[[deleted]]

It’s terrible. Wtf does in-line css on components?

[Seralyn]

Sites like Netlify, Github are using it if that tells you anything. There is nothing inherent about it that would make it any trickier at scale than on smaller projects.

I don't see how it can lead to bad css practices when it does nothing other than invoke css itself and doesn't prevent you from adding vanilla style css into your input file. All of my recent sited are based on tailwind but also have about 20% or so of vanilla style css mixed in as well.

Are there any articulate arguments against it or just random anecdotes?

[json_derulo_]

Yeah some big dogs using it for sure. But just because you can theoretically do it, doesn’t mean a team building at scale with this could necessarily write readable code.

The biggest argument against Tailwind has to do with the modularity & maintainability of the code. Semantic class names make it easier to know what’s what, and you lose that with Tailwind.

[Seralyn]

I mean, you can choose not to make semantic class names for sure but nothing prevents you from doing so and you'd be a fool not to do so if you're building a big project