I think your last point has legs, for sure. It makes sense that some other language will compile to wasm and make some app development more straightforward, but I don’t think the end result will be that different.
The web platform is not going to move away from current paradigm without an overwhelming shift in priorities or needs. Wasm still generates html and outputs it on the screen.
My biggest reason to use tailwind is maintainability. Having everything right in front of me with only the tiniest of abstractions, makes it really simple to refactor and maintain. I can confidently delete “CSS” and know it has no side effects. I can cut and paste a block of html and it will render EXACTLY the same. I don’t have to worry that Steve used a generic sibling selector in a CSS file 3 years ago that is screwing with my layout/design.
Is the HTML more bloated than if I had written “normal” css? Yes, but I think it’s worth the trade-off. It’s important that we can agree that their are trade-offs and then it’s up to each project to decide if those are worth it for their use case.
I’ll also mention the actual CSS file is crazy small as well since the tool only generates classes that are actually used in your project. No more ever-growing css that other people are afraid to delete for fear of breaking some legacy page!
> Wasm still generates html and outputs it on the screen
Sure it can. More usefully to my point though, it can also use any of a number of C++/Rust/etc. UI libraries to render directly to a buffer or canvas, which is in my opinion a better long term solution for true applications (vs websites).
When you do that you get total layout control with no need for CSS or worrying about browser defaults.
As a random example here is the Rust egui library demo app running in a browser using WASM (no HTML): https://www.egui.rs/#demo
The speed and “native application” feel are hard to replicate in JS/HTML, as they are just not great tools for the job or rich desktop (or desktop-like) applications.
The web platform is not going to move away from current paradigm without an overwhelming shift in priorities or needs. Wasm still generates html and outputs it on the screen.
My biggest reason to use tailwind is maintainability. Having everything right in front of me with only the tiniest of abstractions, makes it really simple to refactor and maintain. I can confidently delete “CSS” and know it has no side effects. I can cut and paste a block of html and it will render EXACTLY the same. I don’t have to worry that Steve used a generic sibling selector in a CSS file 3 years ago that is screwing with my layout/design.
Is the HTML more bloated than if I had written “normal” css? Yes, but I think it’s worth the trade-off. It’s important that we can agree that their are trade-offs and then it’s up to each project to decide if those are worth it for their use case.
I’ll also mention the actual CSS file is crazy small as well since the tool only generates classes that are actually used in your project. No more ever-growing css that other people are afraid to delete for fear of breaking some legacy page!