Do I really, really need to move to SASS?

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@ToxicFire

If you or somebody else edits the CSS directly then you will have to incorporate all those changes to your SASS file before you can continue working. Otherwise when you recompile your SASS all those other edits will be overwritten.

Pre processors do not allow you to do anything more than what you can already do with plain CSS. Their main “selling point” is convenience and speed of coding. Unfortunately using pre processors currently also results in several inconveniences (need for compilers and additional apps) and things that can reduce your coding speed (less than ideal support in editors and IDEs when compared with plain CSS).

So it is not about if you can or can’t do something. You can do everything you want with a per-proccessor and without one. It is about how convenient and fast it is to do something and a pre processor is not always the right answer. The right answer depends on the project (how big?), on the way you code (what level of support does your favorite editor / IDE have for SASS?) and how much of the power of the pre processor you actually need.

[daleylife]

I have found on netbeans, sass causes it to crash losing the sass code you are working on. Also you cant edit with chrome extension. Sass needs to work both directions to be usefull. Also you cannot revert refactoring if you rename classes.
The main reason I wanted to try sass was to break up css code into sections.But I think there are better solutions in netbeans.
I also do not like the idea of trying to make css into something else.

[MattDiMu]

@ToxicFire Twitter Bootstrap will switch from LESS to SASS in the upcoming Version 4. I doubt, that less/styles will die within the next 2-3 years, but atm SASS seems to be the clear winner and is probably the “safer” choice.

** usefulness of sass in small projects **
IMO sass makes sense in small projects as well. Not because of the argument “you may switch your color in 2 seconds”, which doesn’t happen very often and seriously – why would I introduce a new language just for such a rare occasion?

The main argument for small projects is IMO the fact, that you may safely and easily REUSE code from older projects (as your projects are small, you’ll have plenty of them, I assume). Useful mixins and functions, even base stylings. If you know “I’ve done this before”, you don’t have to search your old projects css and copy the concerned lines, instead you just include the mixin for it.

Btw, a good Editor, supporting SASS is crucial IMO for a lot of its features:
– Variables are nice, but if you don’t have autocompletion, you need to copy them the same way you’ve copied the hex values before
– Same goes for mixins – if you need to copy/look up the name everytime you use them, it’s not much better than just copying the css lines.

Regards
Matt

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