> Tailwind instead pushes the dev into a CSS-first approach. You think about the Tailwind classes you want, and then throw yet-another-div into the DOM just to have an element to hang your classes on.
I wholeheartedly disagree. That mindset is not caused by Tailwind, but by being ignorant.
You can perfectly create an HTML document with semantic meaning and the add Tailwind just as any other CSS framework or pure CSS to it.
And DIVs do not carry meaning, they are specifically to add functionality or styling, so you can throw in as many as you like. Using them abundantly isn't good style, but the way you make it sound that they're evil isn't good either.
The HTML spec says divs are the element of last resort. This issue isn’t that they’re bad. The issue is they are reached for far too quickly.
Also if you think massive numbers of nested divs don’t have a performance impact in the DOM when reusable components are nested (because “styling”), you’re wrong.
> The HTML spec says divs are the element of last resort. This issue isn’t that they’re bad. The issue is they are reached for far too quickly.
The problem is that HTML gives us very few tools to do anything useful. And you can only push certain elements so far. Div and span are generic elements with no semantics attached. You want a layout? Div. You want a change to a part of text? Span.
The only reason they are called "elements of last reserve" because it's only true if you remember that HTML is, has been, and forever will be a tool to display static text, badly. That's why you have article, section, p, and other text-oriented elements. But the moment you want something beyond that? Welcome to divs.