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VS Code VS Tailwind CSS

Compare VS Code VS Tailwind CSS and see what are their differences

VS Code logo VS Code

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

Tailwind CSS logo Tailwind CSS

A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.
  • VS Code Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-10-09
  • Tailwind CSS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-13

VS Code features and specs

  • Cross-platform
    VS Code works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing a consistent development experience across different operating systems.
  • Extensibility
    A vast library of extensions allows users to add functionalities like debuggers, linters, and themes, making it highly customizable.
  • Integrated Git
    Built-in Git integration makes it easy to manage version control tasks directly within the editor.
  • Performance
    Lightweight compared to full-fledged IDEs, ensuring good performance even on systems with limited resources.
  • IntelliSense
    Advanced code completion and refactoring tools help improve coding efficiency and reduce errors.
  • Community Support
    A strong and active community provides extensive support, tutorials, and third-party extensions.
  • Debugging
    Robust debugging tools for various languages and frameworks are available out of the box.
  • Free and Open-Source
    VS Code is completely free to use and open-source, which is beneficial for both individual developers and organizations.

Possible disadvantages of VS Code

  • Limited IDE Features
    While extensible, it may lack some advanced features found in dedicated IDEs out of the box.
  • Extension Management
    Managing and configuring a large number of extensions can become cumbersome and sometimes lead to performance issues.
  • Learning Curve
    Although user-friendly, it has a steeper learning curve for beginners due to its numerous features and customization options.
  • Memory Usage
    Despite being lightweight, it can consume a significant amount of memory when multiple extensions are installed.
  • Update Frequency
    Frequent updates may sometimes introduce bugs or require users to adapt to new changes quickly.
  • Internet Dependency
    Some features and extensions may require an internet connection to function optimally.
  • Telemetry
    By default, VS Code collects usage data, which might be a concern for users sensitive about data privacy. However, this can be disabled.

Tailwind CSS features and specs

  • Utility-First Approach
    Tailwind CSS uses a utility-first approach, promoting the use of small, reusable utility classes to style elements directly in your markup. This can lead to more readable and maintainable HTML.
  • Customization
    The framework is highly customizable. You can easily configure its default theme, add your extensions, and create custom utilities. Tailwind’s config file allows for deep customization of all aspects of the framework.
  • Consistent Design
    Using utility classes ensures design consistency because the same classes will apply the same styles globally.
  • Responsive Design
    Tailwind CSS has excellent built-in support for responsive design. You can easily apply different styles for different screen sizes using responsive utility variants.
  • Performance
    Tailwind purges unused CSS in production, resulting in smaller final output files and improved performance.
  • Integrates Well with Frameworks
    Tailwind CSS integrates smoothly with modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular.
  • JIT Compiler
    The Just-in-Time (JIT) mode in Tailwind CSS generates styles on-demand, reducing the development build sizes and speeding up the development process.

Possible disadvantages of Tailwind CSS

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers coming from traditional CSS or other CSS frameworks, getting used to Tailwind's utility-first approach may take some time.
  • HTML Congestion
    Due to the utility-first approach, HTML files can get filled with numerous utility classes, making it look cluttered and harder to read.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up Tailwind CSS initially can be complex, especially for beginners. Configuration settings and integrations with build tools can be confusing.
  • Verbosity
    Some developers find the inline utility classes verbose, particularly when complex styles are required, which can lead to bloated template files.
  • Limited Abstractions
    Tailwind doesn't provide higher-level abstractions such as components out of the box, like other frameworks (e.g., Bootstrap) do. Developers need to build and maintain these abstractions themselves.
  • Dependency Tailoring
    While Tailwind aims to be minimalistic, it may enforce some dependencies or build tool integrations that could be unnecessary for very simple projects.

Analysis of VS Code

Overall verdict

  • Yes, VS Code is generally considered a good choice for developers due to its flexibility, efficiency, and strong community support. It is lightweight, fast, and user-friendly, catering to both novice and experienced developers.

Why this product is good

  • VS Code, developed by Microsoft, is a widely popular and versatile code editor. It offers a robust extension ecosystem, which allows developers to customize their workflow and coding environment extensively. Additionally, VS Code supports numerous programming languages right out of the box and provides features like IntelliSense, debugging, Git integration, and a built-in terminal, making it a powerful tool for developers.

Recommended for

  • Web developers looking for a comprehensive yet lightweight coding environment.
  • Software developers who need an editor with extensive language support and customization options.
  • Beginner programmers who would benefit from a feature-rich editor that can grow with their skills.
  • Developers interested in an open-source tool with continuous updates and community-driven enhancements.

VS Code videos

My New Favorite Text Editor - Visual Studio Code

More videos:

  • Review - 7 reasons why I switched to Visual Studio Code from Sublime Text

Tailwind CSS videos

Why I Don't Like Tailwind CSS

More videos:

  • Review - Vanilla CSS vs Bootstrap vs Tailwind CSS - Which one should you choose?
  • Review - Get Started with Tailwind CSS in 15 Minutes

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to VS Code and Tailwind CSS)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
35 35%
65% 65
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using VS Code and Tailwind CSS. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare VS Code and Tailwind CSS

VS Code Reviews

  1. dksinden
    · Working at SpeechKit ·

Boost Your Productivity with These Top Text Editors and IDEs
Visual Studio Code, commonly known as VS Code, is a powerful and extensible code editor developed by Microsoft. With its rich ecosystem of extensions and features like IntelliSense, debugging, and Git integration, VS Code enhances your coding productivity.
Source: convesio.com
13 Best Text Editors to Speed up Your Workflow
Finally, the Visual Studio Code website has numerous tabs for you to learn about the software. The documentation page walks you through steps like the setup and working with different languages. You’re also able to check out some tips and tricks and learn all of the Visual Studio Code keyboard shortcuts. Along with a blog, updates page, extensions library and API...
Source: kinsta.com
Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Previously, VS Code was more suited to developers or engineers due to its lack of data analysis capabilities, but since 2020, the VS Code team has collaborated with the Jupyter team to create an integrated notebook within VS Code. The end result is a fantastic IDE workbook for data analysis.
Source: lakefs.io
The Best IDEs for Java Development: A Comparative Analysis
Overview: Although not a traditional IDE, VS Code has gained popularity as a lightweight code editor.
Source: dev.to
20 Best Diff Tools to Compare File Contents on Linux
Visual studio code is a code editor made by Microsoft. It supports several development operations like debugging, task running, and version control. It works on Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.
Source: linuxopsys.com

Tailwind CSS Reviews

  1. Awesome framework

    I use it in all my current projects. It's easy to start and very customisable. Love it so much! I improved the speed of development 2x times by using Tailwind.


22 Best Bootstrap Alternatives & What Each Is Best For
Tailwind CSS comes with features such as responsive design, customizability, hover, focus, and active states out of the box. These enable developers to build sophisticated, interactive interfaces with ease. When it comes to integrations, Tailwind CSS can be integrated with popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, enhancing its utility across different...
Source: thectoclub.com
15 Top Bootstrap Alternatives For Frontend Developers in 2024
If you want to learn the valuable skill of Tailwind CSS, we highly recommend taking the "Tailwind CSS From Scratch" course by Brad Traversy on Udemy. In this introductory course, you will build great-looking layouts quickly and efficiently using Tailwind CSS utility classes.
Source: coursesity.com
10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
TailwindCSS is a utility-first CSS framework designed to build modern and beautiful websites in no time. Here, utility class names define what to do. Each utility class comes with pre-defined CSS properties.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Tailwind CSS promotes a modular approach to styling, where devs can combine classes to create unique and responsive designs. It offers utilities for layout, typography, colors, spacing, and more, allowing developers to create consistent and visually appealing interfaces with minimal effort.
Source: www.uxpin.com
Top 10 Best CSS Frameworks for Front-End Developers in 2022
Tailwind enables faster development of the front-end. Instead of a default theme or built-in UI components, you’d get pre-designed widget menus and utility classes to build your website. Tailwind has modular components, and if you make changes in one place, other parts of your code won’t get impacted. Tailwind requires the least amount of learning and is easy to use. You can...
Source: hackr.io

Social recommendations and mentions

VS Code might be a bit more popular than Tailwind CSS. We know about 1150 links to it since March 2021 and only 1017 links to Tailwind CSS. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

VS Code mentions (1150)

  • How to use Angular 20 experimental Vitest support outside of ng test
    So, I had to test this new version in a personal project to learn how to use all these new things along with other technologies and tools I’ve used for a long time and also love, like VSCode, ESLint, Prettier, and a bunch of other. And I did, but there’s a catch which makes the whole “experimental” thing have more sense: you can only use this through ng test. - Source: dev.to / about 7 hours ago
  • 6 Reasons CLI Coding Agents Are the Future of Software Development
    A text-based shell interface is extremely lightweight compared to modern IDEs. Because it runs in the terminal, even a feature-rich agent has very low overhead. According to Forgecode “Low Resource Usage: minimal impact on system performance”. In contrast, a full IDE can consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM or more, even when idle. In one user benchmark, Neovim (a terminal editor) used only about 10 MB of RAM,... - Source: dev.to / about 14 hours ago
  • 7 Ways AI Code Review Can Save Hours of Developers' Effort
    Put simply, by automating routine checks, AI reviewers help engineers avoid tens of hours of minor fixes and rewrites. As per my experience, AI code review exemplify this shift: catching issues on the spot in VS Code, they keep developers focused on building features rather than waiting for post-hoc feedback. Against this backdrop, let’s explore the main advantages of AI-powered code review for enterprise teams. - Source: dev.to / 6 days ago
  • Build and Deploy a Real Time ML System
    VSCode to open the repository, or any other IDE that supports devcontainers. - Source: dev.to / 7 days ago
  • What Are the Best Code Editors for Collaborative Coding?
    Visual Studio Code is a highly popular, lightweight, and versatile code editor. Its Live Share extension transforms it into a powerful collaborative tool. With Live Share, developers can co-edit and co-debug codes in real-time, making it easier to handle complex projects together. It offers:. - Source: dev.to / 25 days ago
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Tailwind CSS mentions (1017)

  • Selfish reasons for building accessible UIs
    > When I’m trying to debug a web app, it’s hard to orient myself in the DevTools if the entire UI is “div soup” That’s tame. Try adding some Tailwind CSS. After monitoring Tailwind CSS since its early days, and believing I had some pretty serious philosophical disagreements with it, I recently took an opportunity to try it out in earnest, and it is so mindbogglingly obnoxious in dev tools that... - Source: Hacker News / 2 days ago
  • MailPlanet🌍: Visualize email origins on a global map
    Styling: Tailwind CSS (Assumed, common with Next.js). - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • How to add markdown to a Next.js project
    This article assumes the reader is a developer that knows their way around Markdown, TypeScript, React.js, and [Next.js] https://nextjs.org/). Familiarity with Tailwind-css would also be useful. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • SonicScan - A Music Fingerprinting and Identification App
    Then I learned Tauri and used my favourite frontend framework SolidJS with TailwindCSS and DaisyUI to build the UI with MotionOne to add animations and Tauri to build the desktop/web/android/ios app. - Source: dev.to / 28 days ago
  • Top 5 Free React UI Libraries to Use in 2025
    Shadcn/ui contains a set of beautifully designed and accessible components, and it works seamlessly with major React frameworks. It’s open-source and has amassed 85.5k (and counting) GitHub stars. It’s built on the shoulders of giants — Radix UI and Tailwind CSS, making it one of the best to work with. Unlike many other UI libraries, the components are not just installed as npm modules, they’re downloaded into... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing VS Code and Tailwind CSS, you can also consider the following products

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Bootstrap - Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and JS for popular UI components and interactions

Vim - Highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing

Bulma - Bulma is an open source CSS framework based on Flexbox and built with Sass. It's 100% responsive, fully modular, and available for free.

Notepad++ - A free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces