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Discussion on: Is TailwindCSS Worth It?

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blindfish3 profile image
Ben Calder

Of course adding a dependency to your project is just a trivial npm install --save-dev away (and hopefully minimal config); but what you're also adding is technical debt. So the question is: does Tailwind provide enough functionality (compared to well established solutions) to justify this? Is the config - to use it effectively - minimal in practice? How easy will it be to replace when the next new and shiny CSS solution comes along? Will new developers (who should already know CSS) be able to pick it up quickly? How maintainable is the code going to be? etc. etc.

There's far more to properly managing a project than installing the latest shiny toy because everyone's raving about it...

 
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David Gil de Gómez

How it adds technical debt?

What adds technical debt is to have a trillion lines of redundant CSS. Adding a library does not add technical debt.

 
blindfish3 profile image
Ben Calder

Depends on your definition I suppose... but IMO adding a library absolutely does add to technical debt; especially if not well managed. TBH I can't be bothered getting into a long discussion on that subject right now; so I guess we can agree to disagree on that.
Anyway - the point is that some developers are more cautious than others; so we want to see tangible, quantifiable benefits before investing ourselves into a new library. As far as Tailwind is concerned I'm yet to be convinced 🤷

 
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Dennis Groß (he/him) • Edited

I am with David in this regard. Libraries don't add technical dept per se.

Technical debts are nothing else than poor code quality and poor architectural decisions. It is just a nicer way to tell the customer that the code base became a bit messy and some stuff needs to be refactored.