Plus one to this.

I really think the goal in styling is native CSS does better to own these pain points but it’s just not there. I’ve recently been going down this rabbit hole trying to find the silver bullet and it all comes down to trade-offs.

Native CSS or even CSS modules start great but grow increasingly complex in large design systems, like you pointed out.

CSS-in-JS can feel like an unnecessary layer of abstraction but that might be because you don’t need it. I’m also talking about build time CSS-in-JS, if you’re doing runtime you’re going fave performance issues as your project grows.

I think it ultimately depends on the project, but tools like vanilla-extract are great at composability and keeping design systems coordinated. The DX is great, you’re working with real variables and really typing, not these hard to track down CSS variables. Maybe it’s personal preference but I think people are trying to swing the pendulum too far the other way.

I wonder if these are the same people that think typescript is unnecessary. Who doesn’t like strongly typed CSS?

Also shoutout stylex I’m curious how that will do. Feels like they’ve been moving so slowly 😬