Tailwind is less dialect, more subset. If someone has zero pre-existing knowledge of HTML/CSS then something like Tailwind is, in my opinion, a much better introduction to styling web pages because it focuses on one dimension: determining which rules you'd like to apply to which elements.
With Tailwind, you're not caught up in understanding the relationship between CSS and HTML which includes challenges like inheritance. Another benefit of Tailwind for new learners is the exhaustive documentation which captures all of the rules and their relationship in one place: it's hard to overstate the value of being able to look at a single page to fully understand how you can pad an element.
Certainly, there's limits to what you can achieve with Tailwind, but given it does expose a learner to the key principles of styling, it can then lead into an expanded learning of CSS if a user is interested in learning more -- you don't have to unlearn anything from Tailwind.
I can absolutely understand why someone would dislike Tailwind, especially those with pre-existing knowledge of CSS for whom this is a totally different way of styling, but to describe it as problematic for newcomers seems ignorant of where the real challenges of learning CSS are.
> With Tailwind, you're not caught up in understanding the relationship between CSS and HTML which includes challenges like inheritance.
I’m sorry but to really learn CSS, you need to get this. The fact the TW abstracts this away may be easier to learn, but it does the learner a huge disservice if the don’t get what’s going on. Learning from first principles is always the best approach, even if the learning curve is slightly steeper, because it reduces a lot of mystery down the line when something isn’t behaving as expected.
First principles is far from the best approach to learning. Learning is a means to an end: we learn to use tools so that we can use them. If a tool is built in such a way that I don’t need to understand the underlying technology then that’s a good thing, because it means I can gain value from the tool faster.
I, personally, started writing HTML and CSS long before any of the tools we are discussing existed, CSS Zen Garden was state of the art back when I was learning… and nowadays I am very thankful that I don’t need to keep all of the esoteric aspects of CSS in my head when styling my HTML.
The most effective method for learning is the method that keeps the learner interested, and for most people, that’s the method that gets them to results the quickest. If you want to start learning how to make webpages by doing a deep dive on the DOM and WebKit, great, but that’s not the path for most people.
I was trying Tailwind out a few weeks ago for a very simple static web page. I'm close to beginner with slight knowledge of CSS and HTML. It was surprising to me that all the styling disappeared from <a> tags, and it took some Googling just to see how to work around that. I wound up just going with Spectre to get an acceptable solution. The Tailwind docs seem more for its target audience and not pure beginners. Is there some resource to learn Tailwind in the manner you are suggesting?
I'm unsure what you mean by "...all the styling disappeared from <a> tags..." so I can't confidently provide insight. My first thought was perhaps you're referring to the special `visited` state of an `a` element. However, a `visited` link should not lose styling that it is applied to the element explicitly, so it's unlikely to be that -- part of the value of Tailwind is that it prevents this class of issue.
Can you provide more insight into the specifics of the issue? I am happy to try and diagnose the issue -- even if you've moved on from Tailwind, you might get value out of understanding the issue! A GitHub repository link would be ideal, or some code in a Gist :)
My gut feeling is that the issue you're describing has nothing to do with Tailwind. One of the challenges of learning any library or technology: you can experience an issue outside of the bounds of your understanding and misattribute the issue to the tool in question, even after decade(s) of experience, this'll still happen!
With Tailwind, you're not caught up in understanding the relationship between CSS and HTML which includes challenges like inheritance. Another benefit of Tailwind for new learners is the exhaustive documentation which captures all of the rules and their relationship in one place: it's hard to overstate the value of being able to look at a single page to fully understand how you can pad an element.
Certainly, there's limits to what you can achieve with Tailwind, but given it does expose a learner to the key principles of styling, it can then lead into an expanded learning of CSS if a user is interested in learning more -- you don't have to unlearn anything from Tailwind.
I can absolutely understand why someone would dislike Tailwind, especially those with pre-existing knowledge of CSS for whom this is a totally different way of styling, but to describe it as problematic for newcomers seems ignorant of where the real challenges of learning CSS are.