Why I Don’t Use CSS Preprocessors

Published on December 14, 2016 (↻ June 6, 2021), filed under (RSS feed for all categories).

Though late I wish to follow Roger as I couldn’t agree more with him: I don’t use CSS preprocessors, either (never so in my personal projects), because CSS preprocessors are like a solution in need of a problem to me, too.

My reasons almost perfectly match Roger’s:

The only exception to me, and there I disagree with Roger, is that we don’t only need but can actually have pretty DRY CSS without preprocessors. Not repeating ourselves should be first nature to us, a part of our craft, and as we can’t yet automate DRYing up CSS it’s on us to keep our style sheets efficient and maintainable.

As for CSS post-processors, I don’t use them, either, then, again at least not in my personal projects; yet that’s a different story, and I close with another hat tip to Roger. Listen to what he says đŸ˜Š

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About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a frontend engineering leader and tech author/publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m a contributor to several web standards, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development (and engineering management), but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences. (Be critical, interpret charitably, and send feedback.)

Comments (Closed)

  1. On December 16, 2016, 12:19 CET, Marc said:

    Thanks. Genau der Meinung bin ich auch.

    Mir ist daher auch nicht klar, warum SASS, LESS und what ever als Features angegeben werden, wenn ich zB auf ein tolles WP-Framework stoße. Das ist fĂŒr mich eher ein negativer Punkt.

    Is egal. Schönes Wochenende.

  2. On December 16, 2016, 16:25 CET, J. Eichhorn said:

    Preprocessors can be extremly usefull! IÂŽm compiling a bunch of totally different themes with one main codebase. The maintenance would be far more work and pain without sass.
    In case of an wordpress theme you arenÂŽt committed make use of less/sass but i would always prefer it. Since you gain the ability to customize a whole codebase with just a few variables (otherwise search/replace).

    And the last and maybe most important thing, is that you have to learn the preprocessors. Sass is really beneficial for me and i claim that the resulting css is dry and clean.