I only do front-end dev occasionally, but these are my 3 goto articles that make me lean towards not using Tailwind:
1: https://www.zolkos.com/2025/12/03/vanilla-css-is-all-you-nee...
2: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/subgrid/
3: https://railsdesigner.com/custom-elements/ (more Rails specific)
I’m a full time front end dev, and I’ve basically accepted at this point that some people are really into tailwind, and some people are not. I’m not, and for a while I strongly preferred working with other devs who were also not… but at this point, LLMs have completely erased that distinction.
It's my primary role. I started using jsxstyle a dozen years ago alongside React and really liked the ability to style my components in situ without breaking browser architecture assumptions.
I recently had to help out on a vibe coded project that inherited Tailwind (I think from Figma). It was a short assignment so I didn't dig that deep, but I don't understand the value prop of Tailwind. There was no obvious improvement over what I've been used to; in fact, it seemed a lot messier.