The latest articles on DEV Community by Blake Coleman (@blake_codes). https://dev.to/blake_codes https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4210633%2Fed3142dd-d7ec-47e4-bce5-3852395b5dac.jpg https://dev.to/blake_codes en Blake Coleman Tue, 27 Oct 2026 15:20:15 +0000 https://dev.to/blake_codes/tailwind-vite-the-small-config-that-finally-clicked-p8i https://dev.to/blake_codes/tailwind-vite-the-small-config-that-finally-clicked-p8i <p>Spent a chunk of this week cleaning up a design system that had grown a bit wild. The thing that helped most wasn't a new library — it was shrinking the token set.</p> <p>Our <code>tailwind.config</code> had around 40 colors. Most were one-off. I cut it down to 12 and the UI got <em>more</em> consistent overnight.</p> <p>Two things I keep coming back to:</p> <ul> <li>A design token is a contract. If it changes weekly, it's not a token.</li> <li>Vite's dev server makes iterating on this stuff fast enough that I actually do it.</li> </ul> <p>Next on my list: learning Elixir, mostly because I want to understand what "let it crash" feels like after years of defensive JS. If anyone has a good starting point, I'm all ears.</p> tailwindcss css vite