When people compare utility classes with inline styles, they're not referring to the limitations of inline styles. Obviously utility classes are much more powerful. The comparison is usually about overloading the html with dozens of classes for each element. One has to write so many classes that one cannot help but feeling one's writing CSS directly inside html, very much like with inline styles. Instead of constructing the way an element looks like on the css file (where it should be), one is building the appearance directly into the html. How does this element look like? Instead of checking the css file, I need to look both to tailwind docs AND the html!

15:50 It's actually the framework's breakpoints for responsiveness that is usually my biggest annoyance. You get ease of use but you also get someone else's design choices. Otherwise I'd probably have been a tailwind zealot by now.

My god ❤

there's always more to CSS, many ways to write and design better software

Just to get rid of the usual utility CSS straw man, I maintain a project that uses scss, and actively develop one using Tailwind CSS. This “dozens” of classes has never happened to me (I’m sure it’s happened to some). In most cases I have a couple to a handful of classes on one element. In extreme cases I might have around 10. If Tailwind CSS can’t handle some new CSS feature, it’s easy to develop your own utility classes that use the new feature. I also notice Tailwind CSS encourages people to break React components into smaller, simpler components to avoid repeating Tailwind CSS strings. I’d argue that’s usually a good thing. Unlike many commenters here, however, I will **NOT** argue that my way is the only way, and others’ ways are wrong or stupid. In fact, if I had learned an interview candidate had that attitude, I’d insist on not hiring them. I like scss, and I like Tailwind CSS more.

This is a good talk, but I have one critique. Bringing in "atomic css vs semantic css" dilutes your talk. I much rather this sticks to the topic "utility first CSS vs inline styles".

I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with this one. The issue with inline styles isn't that you can't conditionally target psudo states. It's that you've effed up your HTML

I'm using utility classes so yea, they can be cool, but I will never use a bloated framework like tailwind which take the concept to the extreme.

I don't understand why all the performance-obsessed developers are OK with mucking up HTML with wild inline CSS or ridiculous "utility" class frameworks with CSS pre-processers out there. The Idiocracy movie is reality now.🤷‍♂