> If suddenly CSS became pleasant to use, Tailwind would be in a rough spot.

CSS is pleasant to use. I know I find it pleasant to use; and I know there are quite a few frontend developers who do too. I didn't pay much attention to tailwind, until suddenly I realized that it has spread like wildfire and now is everywhere. What drove that growth? Which groups were the first adopters of tailwind; how did they grow; when did the growth skyrocket? Why did it not stay as niche as, say, htmx?

That’s not at all why I bought Tailwind Plus. I bought it (at work) to have a solid collection of typical components and UI patterns, mostly expertly designed with a lot of attention to detail, to use as inspiration and as a shared language with other frontend devs and designers. I rarely (if ever) actually copy pasted any of their HTML or Tailwind styles. It’s mostly used as reference and inspiration. The fact that it’s implemented in Tailwind is mostly irrelevant (Tailwind really isn’t hard to use, especially after your first couple of small projects).

How is this drastically different than a lot of software companies that open source software and then sell support service for monetization?

CSS has come a long way. I used to include Bootstrap in all of my projects, effectively by default. Now it's obsolete. Especially with Grid and Flex.

Do people even know what they can do with CSS these days?

https://lyra.horse/blog/2025/08/you-dont-need-js/

> If suddenly CSS became pleasant to use

Not being sarcastic, but this will never be. CSS is a perfectly functional interface, but the only way it becomes less annoying is when you abstract it behind something more user friendly like tailwind or AI (or you spend years building up knowledge and intuition for its quirks and foibles).

We have decades of data at this point that fairly conclusively shows that many people find CSS as an interface inherently confusing.

> Making GitHub actions runners more reliable, stable and economical would hurt Microsoft.

Can you explain this one a bit? I know some folks who would absolutely increase their spend if Actions runners were better. As it stands I've seen folks trying to move off of them.

I know I’m echoing others’ responses but CSS in 2026 is incredible, easy to use and beautiful.

I find the tailwindcss approach inexcusable and unmaintainable.

> killed Tailwind Labs

They are still around.

> "Give everything away for free and this people will leave technology"

This is more interesting, although somewhat generally understood (can be conflated with people seeing "free" and "cheap" and therefore undesirable). It depends on your definitely of longevity but we certainly have a LOT of free software that has, so far, lasted the test of time.

You can’t even have dynamic Classes: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/detecting-classes-in-source-fil...

> <div class="text-{{ error ? 'red' : 'green' }}-600"></div>

—- I find it really crazy that they think would be good idea. I wonder how many false positive css stuff is being added given their “trying to match classes”. So if you use random strings like bg-… will add some css. I think it’s ridiculous, but tells that people that use this can’t be very serious about it and won’t work in large projects.

—— > Using multi-cursor editing When duplication is localized to a group of elements in a single file, the easiest way to deal with it is to use multi-cursor editing to quickly select and edit the class list for each element at once

Instead of using a var and reusing, you just use multi cursors. Bad suggestions again.

—-

> If you need to reuse some styles across multiple files, the best strategy is to create a component

But on benefits says

> Your code is more portable — since both the structure and styling live in the same place, you can easily copy and paste entire chunks of UI around, even between different projects.

—-

> Making changes feels safer — adding or removing a utility class to an element only ever affects that element, so you never have to worry about accidentally breaking something another page that's using the same CSS.

CSS in js fixed this long time ago.

—-

<div class="mx-auto flex max-w-sm items-center gap-x-4 rounded-xl bg-white p-6 shadow-lg outline outline-black/5 dark:bg-slate-800 dark:shadow-none dark:-outline-offset-1 dark:outline-white/10"> <img class="size-12 shrink-0" src="/img/logo.svg" alt="ChitChat Logo" /> <div> <div class="text-xl font-medium text-black dark:text-white">ChitChat</div> <p class="text-gray-500 dark:text-gray-400">You have a new message!</p> </div> </div>

So many classes you need to learn to use it.

> Tailwind Labs relied on a weird monetization scheme. Revenue was proportional to the pain of using the framework.

Really? To me, Tailwind seemed like the pinnacle of how anyone here would say “open source software” should function. Provide a solid, truly open source, software and make money from consulting or helping others use it and selling custom built solutions around it. The main sin of Tailwind was assuming that type of business could scale to a “large business” structure as opposed to “a single dev”-type project. By a “single dev”-type I don’t mean literally one guy, but more a very lean and non-corporate or company-like structure.

Vercel (and redislabs, mongo, etc) are different because they are in the “we can run it for you” business. Which is another “open source” model I have dabbled in for a while in my career. Thinking that the honest and ethical position is to provide open source software, then offer to host it for people who don’t want to selfhost and charge for that.

I think you live in a conspiracy world.

> Improving accessibility to compute power would hurt Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Yeah, if they were not competing against each other.

> If suddenly CSS became pleasant to use, Tailwind would be in a rough spot. See the irony?

Honestly, I don't. If people suddenly adopted a heathier lifestyle, doctors, at least dentists, would be in a rough spot.

See the irony? Well, again I don't.

The pain and opportunity will move elsewhere.

Tailwind is a handy tool that deserves support and sustainability

Your synthesis points to software in the public interest. Governments need to start forking projects and guiding them through maturity, the same as other public utilities.

GPT is the middleman.

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