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Comment by pupppet | Hacker News Reader

I'd be very surprised if there are many devs with a deep understanding of CSS using Tailwind.

I'm sorry but this is just a crazy thing to say. You cannot use Tailwind without understanding CSS.

Take the example `block`. Ok so a junior FE dev is supposed to use this class without understanding CSS? How?! It just maps to `display: block;`. It hides literally none of the complexity.

I don't agree with the parent poster, but I would say that there is a large portion of frontend devs that "don't understand css" at a very deep level. For every 1 that does there are a good 9 or 10 that just get enough to get by.

That said -- you need to know the average amount of CSS to be successful using tailwind.

>It hides literally none of the complexity.

If it didn't hide any of complexity you'd be writing CSS.

Nope, it saves me (a) keystrokes and (b) design effort. The restricted subset of color options, for example, lets me use a predictable color system out of the box without having to think about it. It's not about removing "complexity" in the sense of understanding how CSS works.

With a stylesheet you have the styles in one place, with Tailwind you repeat it on every element. Yes components and copy/paste are a thing but I'd be very surprised if you're having to manage less style code with Tailwind. As for design effort, setup a few primary/secondary accent colors as global variables.

Not exactly - with Tailwind you aren't repeating the design decision, only the scalar value. So `border-2` might mean a border width of 4px or 6px or whatever, but that's the design decision that is encapsulated within the theme configuration.

Well... you can bumble through using tailwind without understanding it much in the same way you can bumble through using CSS without understanding it much.

There are plenty of people bumbling through with both.

But understanding the CSS is needed to use it reasonably well.

I'll give you an example of one:

Adam Wathan, the creator of Tailwind

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