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hakunin·

I only do front-end dev occasionally, but these are my 3 goto articles that make me lean towards not using Tailwind:

1: https://www.zolkos.com/2025/12/03/vanilla-css-is-all-you-nee...

2: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/subgrid/

3: https://railsdesigner.com/custom-elements/ (more Rails specific)

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It's my primary role. I started using jsxstyle a dozen years ago alongside React and really liked the ability to style my components in situ without breaking browser architecture assumptions.

I recently had to help out on a vibe coded project that inherited Tailwind (I think from Figma). It was a short assignment so I didn't dig that deep, but I don't understand the value prop of Tailwind. There was no obvious improvement over what I've been used to; in fact, it seemed a lot messier.

A lot of the time the choice comes down to abundance of resources and community support. So if we're comparing tools (e.g. jsxstyle vs tailwind) maybe Tailwind could actually win on those parameters (no actual idea, just guessing based on the number of stars jsxstyle has on Github), but if we're comparing vanilla to [any tool] then vanilla usually takes the cake.

I often feel like I'm the only person using jsxstyle, which is wild since it was done by Pete Hunt, same guy who spun React out of Instagram.

If I was using React, I'd probably like this tool too. The best counter to "community supported" is "so conceptually simple and small that it doesn't need a community". But perhaps that's kind why I'm not big on React in general.

I’m a full time front end dev, and I’ve basically accepted at this point that some people are really into tailwind, and some people are not. I’m not, and for a while I strongly preferred working with other devs who were also not… but at this point, LLMs have completely erased that distinction.

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