It’s funny, as someone that’s been using CSS for decades I don’t really know how to respond because the scenario outlined here is not one I recognise. My button would be a <button>, so no, I wouldn’t have a .button class, it’s superfluous.

What I would have is:

- a global palette specified via CSS variables

- overrides for dark mode etc specified at the global level so I don’t have to worry about it at the component level

- CSS module files so I specifically don’t need to care for the context of my entire project, just the classes for my current component

Of course, you stopped thinking about CSS a decade ago so you don’t know about any of these improvements. Which is fine but it strikes me as a little strange to be so boastful of ignorance.

As someone who has barely touched Tailwind I’m genuinely curious: if you wanted, say, a consistent border color for use across your project how would you? Are you defining a class name in JS for use with $framework_name? And do you really style each component separately for dark mode? Repeating the same modifiers over and over?

You just make a design system in your tailwind.css, following the documentation. You can optionally use something like daisyui if you do not have designer skills or the time.

That handles consistent sizing, spacing, text, colors, dark mode, and anything else your design system needs. It all compiles down to css in the end, so no runtime overhead and gives you the superior tailwind dx during development.

Are you suggesting to style the tag name directly? Because that would create chaos in a codebase. <button> is for semantics. It's possible that other design system components need the same semantic element.