Comment by biztos
2 days ago
Is AI making component libraries redundant? Or is it just making it really easy to use free component libraries?
(Or is it really more about traffic to the documentation site and thus eyeballs on the sales pitch?)
I'm making an app using ShadCN, which is pretty good and free -- maybe Tailwind Plus would be significantly better, I don't know, I had to consider the possibility that this project never makes any money so I wanted free for the first shot. And the LLMs turn out to know it pretty well.
Once I get it built using ShadCN, it's hard to imagine when I'd have time to go redo all the component hackery with another library, even if it were way better.
I guess my point is just that "paid UI components" is a really tough business when there are so many people willing to make components just for the fun/glory/practice. Same with a lot of UI stuff it seems -- I highly respect icon designers, but I'm probably just going to use Lucide.
I've known of the paid components for years and never thought of buying them. It's so easy to build things with Tailwind that it never crossed my mind.
I think all kinds of libraries are becoming redundant. Unless the library solves significant technical problems its likely AI will generate whatever you need. Even tailwind itself is kind of unnecessary, I've used it a lot, but recently been just using AI to generate raw css on side projects, I feel it works pretty well. Tailwind is really a developer convivence, it made things pretty fast to style, but now I don't really think it has anywhere near the advantages it did. If you aren't writing tailwindcss but generating it, almost all the advantage is gone. Only thing it kind of provides is a set of defaults / standards
Fwiw I don’t even think shadcn is good, but our app is built on top of those components already, so we can’t change it without changing everything, so we’re stuck with it.