Is Tailwind CSS the Future of CSS Frameworks?

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Facundo Corradini
Senior Developer
Tailwind logo in the clouds next to a plane

Very few technologies in front-end development raise such a passionate divide as Tailwind CSS. From people madly in love with it claiming that “it fixes CSS” to detractors that discard it as “just abstracted inline styles”, It would seem that no month can go by on Tech Twitter without a flame war about Tailwind. 

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However, I believe the arguments about Tailwind are rarely scoped to the framework itself, but are part of much deeper discussions. Let’s go through how it really works, dismantle some of the arguments from both camps, and address the most important question: is Tailwind the future of CSS?

Gif of Tailwind CSS code snippet.

What Is Tailwind CSS?

If we had to put it in a one-liner, we could say that Tailwind is a utility-first CSS framework, but I guess that won’t mean much if we don’t get into a little bit of CSS architecture first. 

Screenshot of Tailwind CSS homepage.

Historically, one of the biggest challenges of CSS has been keeping things organized, especially as the team grows and more people work in the codebase.  Someone said that “the max number of people that can productively work on CSS is one”, and there’s quite a bit of truth behind that joke. If we don’t set clear guidelines, CSS can be particularly tricky to maintain. 

Several CSS architectures have been developed throughout the years to help address the issue. From the good ol’ Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) to Block Element Modifier (BEM) and Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (SMACSS), numerous solutions have been proposed to keep our classes organized while embracing the power of semantics, the cascade, and the fundamental paradigm of separation of concerns. 

But as the web shifted towards a JavaScript-heavy modular architecture, we’ve seen other approaches emerge. In one way or another, these approaches seem to be more compatible with the modern web (or at least, with the people developing it): various flavors of CSS-In-JS, styled-components, and Utility-First CSS. 

Originally published on Sep 16, 2021Last updated on Mar 15, 2023

Key Takeaways

Who uses Tailwind CSS?

Anyone with basic CSS skills and some knowledge of tooling can use Tailwind CSS, but it’s mostly used by front-end developers with an imperative programming background working in modern JS frameworks, primarily React. From news websites like The Verge and Mashable to NASA’s very own Jet Propulsion Laboratory website – everyone big and small is starting to see Tailwind CSS as the future of front-end styling.

What is Tailwind CSS used for?

It can be used for pretty much any of your web styling needs, but it's better suited for rapid prototyping when you don’t have a design available, to implement designs into code in a scalable way, and to keep a maintainable CSS architecture in bigger projects.

Is Tailwind CSS easy to learn?

Tailwind is incredibly easy to get started with, and the learning curve scales brilliantly. Being closer to an API than to a UI toolkit, it works in a more foundational layer so it doesn’t require much more than learning the sort of aliases for the CSS properties to set you on the right path. I’d dare to say Tailwind can be learned in a day and mastered in a week, and that may probably be a conservative estimate.