> CSS can be laser-like specific if you want it to. Want to only affect that thing? Use ids, inline styles or learn how to write proper selectors.
You've still go all the normal CSS problems like having to debug complex selectors, jumping between files to debug styling, having to name lots of things you're only going to use once, verbose media queries, verbose styling attributes, and not knowing when it's safe to delete styling because you don't know where it's shared.
And for what benefits? To say we're writing CSS "the right way", when it was designed for styling traditional documents and not for complex UIs?
This also strikes me as a "if everyone learned to do it properly, there wouldn't be a problem" statement. It's ignoring the reality that nobody can agree on the proper way to write CSS, and writing discipled CSS is fatiguing and time consuming. And even if you could get everyone to adopt the same approach, the above issues are still a big deal.
It's a real failing when a language or methodology requires you to invent your own complex discipline to tame it (e.g. C and C++), and get everyone on the team to follow this. At some stage, it's better to scrap everything and try again with what was learned to avoid the mess.
> 90% of CSS issues I heard complaints about boiled down to the complainers not having spent the time necessary to learn the basics. And the other 10% were solved by :has()
I really don't agree, I understand traditional CSS and how to use complex selectors and it's just not a good approach except mostly for styling traditional Markdown-like documents and adding your own utility classes. If laser-like specific selectors is something I want more of the time, I want this as the default and for it to be easy.
Tailwind is a very thin layer above CSS and you can't use it properly without knowing CSS. Coupled with the way you reuse styles in Tailwind by using templates (instead of sharing via classes), it solves most of the problems with CSS in a simple way that people find simple to follow.
Tailwind's major downside is it isn't the "traditional" way (which nobody can agree on anyway for complex UI styling), so Tailwind gets attacked for being the wrong way without its benefits and tradeoffs being examined properly.
