Introduction

Maintaining a CSS codebase can become chaotic pretty quickly and building a new stylesheet for every project can get tedious. Frameworks like Tailwind CSS were born to solve this problem.

Adam Wathan, CEO of Tailwind Labs, built a "library-style CSS" for personal use and had no idea the concept would resonate with as many people as it did. When developers started asking him to share his library for them to use in their own projects, he got to work building out the framework. Two years after Tailwind CSS's launch, Adam released Headless UI to bring unstyled compatible UI components into the fold. Since then, it's sparked polarizing discourse between developers who either love it or hate it. 

In this episode, Chuck and Robbie talk to Adam about what motivated him to create Tailwind CSS, how Headless UI was born, why Tailwind is creating polarizing discourse among developers, and his powerlifting past.

Key Takeaways

• [00:35] - An introduction to Adam Wathan.
• [01:55] - A whiskey review - W3WC Sagamore Rye Barrel Pick #001.
• [06:51] - Adam explains Tailwind CSS.
• [09:47] - The problems that inspired Adam to create Tailwind.
• [35:24] - How Headless UI fits into Tailwind.
• [41:09] - Whether Tailwind will support other frameworks in the future.
• [44:33] - Adam's powerlifting career.

Quotes

[16:47] - "I started noticing that the only things that really survived every port were the things that were lower and lower level. Something like a class that adds margin left to something that's useful in every project, but a button might look different in every project." ~ Adam Wathan [https://twitter.com/adamwathan]

[23:40] - "The main problem that Tailwind is ultimately trying to solve is giving inline style superpowers. It's not like inline styles are evil, it's like inline styles are awesome. Let's make them super awesome." ~ Adam Wathan [https://twitter.com/adamwathan]

[24:10] - "To me, Tailwind is basically inline styles with a bunch of extra power bolted on." ~ Adam Wathan [https://twitter.com/adamwathan]

Links

• Adam Wathan [https://adamwathan.me/]
• Adam Wathan Twitter [https://twitter.com/adamwathan]
• Adam Wathan LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wathan-9418984a/?originalSubdomain=ca]
• Tailwind CSS [https://tailwindcss.com/]
• Tailwind UI [https://tailwindui.com/]
• Discord [https://discord.com/]
• CSS Zen Garden [http://www.csszengarden.com/]
• Nicolas Gallagher [https://nicolasgallagher.com/]
• Normalize CSS [https://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/]
• Bootstrap [https://getbootstrap.com/]
• Laravel [https://laravel.com/]
• Vue [https://vuejs.org/]
• React [https://reactjs.org/]
• Riverside [https://www.npmjs.com/~riverside]
• Chrome [https://www.google.com/chrome/]
• Stimulus [https://stimulus.hotwired.dev/reference/css-classes]
• Twitter [https://twitter.com/?lang=en]
• Select2 [https://select2.org/]
• BEM [https://getbem.com/]
• Atomic CSS [https://acss.io/]
• Markdown [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax]
• Headless UI [https://headlessui.com/]
• Select2 [https://select2.org/]
• Svelte [https://svelte.dev/]
• Caleb Porzio [https://calebporzio.com/]
• Alpine JS [https://alpinejs.dev/]
• Solid JS [https://www.solidjs.com/]