I've been hand rolling CSS for pretty much every site I've built since 2001. I can't think of a single site with more than a few hundred lines. Most of the time I use a reset which adds more, but the actual site specific stuff has always been relatively small. Anecdata… mumble, mumble.

With respect to the premise of the article: I appreciate having variables because it allows more specificity about what a color or unit is supposed to mean in a given context, which I find valuable.