Why we undervalue front-end expertise in the web development world.

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Critiques of CSS utilities and frameworks such as Tailwind are often met with bandwagon attacks from its community. The general consensus around CSS is that it’s not a valuable language to learn. Many self-proclaimed full-stack developers don’t know how to write good and/or modern CSS.

Tailwind and the Femininity of CSS

<h1>One thing you said:</h1>
“That heavy lifting, unfortunately, doesn’t account for the human time and care needed for things like accessibility.”
It’s no longer a valid argument to make since <a href="http://radix-ui.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">radix-ui.com</a> show up recently.
<h1>Also,</h1>
Most developers don’t like working with/writing CSS because it’s 1) hard “simple but not easy,” maybe some would argue it’s harder than python or JS, 2) no one is forcing (making it a priority) them to learn/work with CSS and actually use it since there’s a lot of alternatives: CSS-in-JS, Material, Bootstrap, and Tailwind, to name a few.
But that’s not exclusive only to CSS, someone would make the same case with every other language or technology that employers don’t make a priority and replace it with some framework.
I’m not saying that they’re wrong, obviously, there are very good reasons why there are such frameworks, also I’m not saying you are wrong, because it seems to me that you’re trying to make a “could be” point through the article, but I’m making it a bit clearer to you that, what you’re arguing isn’t limited to CSS, and it has nothing to do with (your) politics, femininity, or masculinity and the fact that you’re making it all about femininity may indicate that you may have got yourself too far into “that game”.

<blockquote>
So when it comes down to the root of the problem, perhaps it isn’t CSS itself but our unwillingness to examine our sexist ideas of what is worthy in web development.
</blockquote>
What?
CSS is just a purpose-specific language that people don’t want to invest themselves into - just like I don’t want to invest myself when it comes to stuff like Java but I like investing into CSS.
What a forced article…

I have to say this article seems to try mixing apples with pears and then pondering over why it does not taste like a lemon.
CSS is a great language and I pretty much used it solely in a lot of projects in the past. No frameworks attached. It’s beautiful and there’s a vibrant community (eg. YouTubers like Kevin Powell and co).
But Tailwind should not be labelled a crutch used by developers who “don’t understand CSS”. It should not be learned without first learning about CSS, that’s a valid point. This problem is however not Tailwind specific. The same goes for React over JS, jQuery over JS even other languages entirely like Spring over Java.
And if the tool does help developers in creating projects, how is it any different that Sass or Less (which a few years ago were very much needed and used almost unanimously by big projects and companies).
That is to say, Tailwind is not perfect but it doesn’t have to be. There are valid reasons to include it on sites (sometimes combined with other tools that alleviate its most prominent problems) and there are valid reasons not to.
This article presents however none of this.

It seems written by an artificial intelligence, however, I always approve of those who reflect on the hyper-hyped tools we consume