yeah, and then one day you want .button, but with a variation. GREAT. but oh no, now there's this other button that has a little bit of a change but not enough to create a separate class. maybe we'll just inline it... but no, i need a mobile selector here or i have some complex hover style. i know, let's create a basic utility class to help me out here. hmm, starting to look suspiciously like tailwind...

now multiply this problem by more people working on an app, with different isolated components that they never even dreamed of during css zen garden's time and this is how something arose. we've tried creating centralized css sheets and it just doesn't work at scale.

so yeah, a necessary evil, but i wouldn't call it an anti-pattern. it grew out of real needs. we had bootstrap and all these css frameworks attempting to make "order" about of something that honestly after decades of working with i don't think can be ever be fully "clean". people just gotta move past it.