Here is a thought you might want to consider and see if it makes sense. This is personal, but I also believe this is where design codes (especially CSS) are going to go.
It is not going to be Tailwind or more new frameworks. Honestly, I think all of these Bootstrap, Foundation, and Tailwind, etc. are like middle-layer abstractions are for designs that are neither small nor large. Bootstrap won because of the out-of-the-box UI designs that looked nice overall, and so did Tailwind. By the way, I love Tailwind's color palette, and I continue to steal from it all the time.
CSS (the actual raw CSS) has become so usable, easy and just works while browsers are so advanced these days, that I don't think we even need to reset/normalize/sanitize the styles.
The tools we need will soon be the ones that will integrate directly with IDEs, akin to how the likes of Figma are going. Imagine a designer either does an overall design or works on modules of components or StyleTiles that are reflected in the CSS either on its own or part of the Javascript-ified HTML markups. When a developer changes something, it is reflected back to the designer's tool so that the designer also knows what changed.
I believe this is where the AI-assisted ones will shine — their ability to bridge the relationship between the design and the code. The interface to interact with that can be the drawing tools (Photoshop, Affinity, Figma) for designers, prompts, or harry's wand (it does not matter).
In fact, for small projects, finish it off with a prompt and get a single Stylesheet blob with HTML, and for the larger ones, it can spit out its own Tailwind that talks back to the design tool.
I don't understand why people think Tailwind is a crutch. It's a tool that uses low level abstractions to build things quickly and lends itself to easier maintenance over time. It has its limits, just like high-abstraction CSS or other frameworks have.
It's a bit like saying a van is a "crutch" when you take your family on vacation and that "really" you should be using a bicycle with a trailer on it.
I don't think you understood the analogy. CSS is the language that Tailwind uses. CSS is the language that SCSS is based on. CSS is what other frameworks use. CSS is what the browser interprets for styles.
Tailwind is a methodology and a framework. So, it only makes sense to compare other methodologies or frameworks. "Just CSS" isn't a methodology, though non-web folks often think it is. What they probably mean, most of the time, is a certain brand of high-abstraction CSS made popular in the early 2000s. This way of doing things is 3-4x slower (conservatively) than Tailwind and is more difficult to maintain long term.
Of course, it's possible to mix and match the best features of CSS with a methodology that reigns in these problems, and that's what I'd advocate people do. But generally Tailwind can get you 90% of the way there.
It is not going to be Tailwind or more new frameworks. Honestly, I think all of these Bootstrap, Foundation, and Tailwind, etc. are like middle-layer abstractions are for designs that are neither small nor large. Bootstrap won because of the out-of-the-box UI designs that looked nice overall, and so did Tailwind. By the way, I love Tailwind's color palette, and I continue to steal from it all the time.
CSS (the actual raw CSS) has become so usable, easy and just works while browsers are so advanced these days, that I don't think we even need to reset/normalize/sanitize the styles.
The tools we need will soon be the ones that will integrate directly with IDEs, akin to how the likes of Figma are going. Imagine a designer either does an overall design or works on modules of components or StyleTiles that are reflected in the CSS either on its own or part of the Javascript-ified HTML markups. When a developer changes something, it is reflected back to the designer's tool so that the designer also knows what changed.
I believe this is where the AI-assisted ones will shine — their ability to bridge the relationship between the design and the code. The interface to interact with that can be the drawing tools (Photoshop, Affinity, Figma) for designers, prompts, or harry's wand (it does not matter).
In fact, for small projects, finish it off with a prompt and get a single Stylesheet blob with HTML, and for the larger ones, it can spit out its own Tailwind that talks back to the design tool.
References;
- https://getbootstrap.com
- https://get.foundation
- https://tailwindcss.com
- https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/
- https://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/
- https://csstools.github.io/sanitize.css/
- https://www.figma.com
- https://styletil.es