I am not a fan of polluting HTML markup with 3000 classes, it feels like in-line styles and table-based designs from 10+ years ago. When Bootstrap came about, it brought standardization and simplification of CSS.
Once you learn the "row" and "col" concepts, it's pretty easy to remember and implement. Back in the early days, flex and grids didn't exist so positioning consistently across browsers was such a pain.
Now, with Chrome being the most popular browser, CSS has caught up. Developers don't have to worry too much about compatibility since 90% of browsers out there are Chrome-based anyway, and, Firefox tends to keep up with Chrome standards too.
Enough of the history lesson...
Tailwind in my opinion won because it looks pretty and maintains a standard similar to bootstrap across multiple projects. Once you learn it, as ugly as the markup is, it's fairly standardized and easy to work with regardless of the project.
Out of the box, you get some nice color pallets, smooth-looking sleek fonts, and just pixel perfection. Bootstrap looks okay, it gave us a wireframe grid to work with and some neat components, but it's just not sexy enough! You have to drop to custom CSS to make things look pretty.
Being a backend'er, making things pretty is not my strong point. Tailwind just makes this so much easier, even though I constantly forget what all the classes mean (especially with flex classes, the CSS is easier for me to remember).
What does Claude have to do with Tailwind!?
Since everybody and their Grandma is building with Tailwind these days, FE design is becoming simpler since LLMs now have a large dataset to draw inspiration from.
Furthermore, since Tailwind is kinda standardized, there's only so many different variations of a landing page or UI component thus with a solid prompt and some tailwind skills, a simple Backend'er like myself can easily scaffold great looking UI's in minutes.
I find combining the two is saving me loads of time and helping me build some pretty complex UI's without having to tinker too much, off course my CSS is fairly good, so going in and tweaking or adjusting tailwind classes is just simple.
Soo... In conclusion, Goodbye! old friend AKA Bootstrap, you served me well and look so much cleaner, but end customers don't see the markup. They see the UI and a pretty UI does help alot with conversions, so aah-well, Tailwind it is!
What do you think?
Top comments (2)
Lols, I like how you write with humour and ah yes, I totally agree with you even though I'm not a backend'er yet 😄.
Just started using tailwind and it does save a lot of time and is quite sexy.
Awesome! Thanks for reading and the kind words :-)