Some novel things like a primaryColor variable to easily adust your theme is easily replicated with a traditional find/replace.
The fewer frameworks / compiles-to X languages you have to learn the better.
IMO, a little redundancy is better than a little complexity or a little dependency.
The original reason I switched was for nested structures so I could stop repeating myself. E.g.
div {
&:hover {}
.class ul {}This made it much more pleasant to write in sass.
The other thing is mixins. If vanilla css doesn’t support this then it’s still a no-go.
Lastly I’m confused why sass of all things is an issue. It’s basically css, and very lightweight. You just add one step in your preferred build tool to transpile sass -> css. “vanilla is magically better” is not an argument.
CSS now has variables (if you really need them -- chances are you don't).
The redundancy of writing a selector multiple times is sightly annoying, but I don't think it rises to the level of value I need to include a new dependency in my app or build pipeline.
[0]: https://css-tricks.com/custom-user-mixins/
These are preferable because you can compose them as needed for elements, instead of having to make extra classes.
> CSS now has variables (if you really need them -- chances are you don't).
I fail to see how you could -not- need variables. Not many, mind you, but using none at all boggles the mind. For starters, DRY code is fairly fundamental. When you update a referenced variable you only need to do it in 1 place. Relying on "find and replace" leads to "oops I accidentally missed one, now we have a bug that could have been totally avoided".
It also helps with consistency for site theming/branding. You can define $primaryColor, $primaryHighlight, $secondaryColor, $textColor, $backgroundColor, etc, and reference these down the line instead of copy/pasting and getting bugs if the specs change.
Isn't that the point of selecting classes in the first place? That said, I understand the utility in using it for things like individual colors, as you described.
Any self respecting programmer will find this "solution" abhorrent and inelegant.
There's a trend to throw a library at the problem, but that comes at a cost.
Is it considered bad practice now? How did it rise so quickly, how did it fall so quickly, what's going on in the web dev world?