[freddydumont]

I have come to the same conclusion as the OP: people like tailwind not for its API or ergonomics but for its design system.

Tailwind can actually be decent for templating systems and it’s likely why it’s shipped with Phoenix for example.

But for React components, it’s definitely a step back from CSS-in-JS, which gave you style encapsulation out of the box. Not sure what’s up with the knee-jerk reaction against it in the comments. With vanilla-extract (mentioned in the OP) or PandaCSS, there is no runtime at all.

Just components that defined their structure and style, in a readable way, with less abstraction than Tailwind.

[mejutoco]

I just use tailwind inside components. This problem is because of no components + tailwindcss, not because of tailwind usage alone. Nothing is stopping one from using components that use tailwind.