[Video] Intro to Sass: A World Where Front-end Dev Isn’t Quite So Sucky

By Thomas Snow February 21, 2014

So, you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript right? You’re comfortable with them. Sure, there’s all that talk you keep hearing about how cool preprocessors like Sass are, but it all sounds a bit ‘command-liney’.

It’s time we had “the talk”.

I get where you’re coming from, but they are right. Preprocessors are cool, and they’ll make your code better AND your coding more fun! It’s a no-brainer.

Kiwi web developer Will Marshall is going to walk you through the wonders of Sass and he’ll even throw in a little Haml and CoffeeScript, and it won’t hurt a bit.

Trust me.

CoffeeScript, css preprocessors, HAML, preprocessors, sass, video

Meet the author

Thomas Snow

Thomas is a Commissioning Editor at SitePoint and Learnable.

Kalpesh Singh

Hi Thomas,

Very nice video. Definitely give a try to SAAS.

Thanks!
scott

Great talk, my one comment is about HAML, I personally use a great plugin for my text editor called Emmet that seems to do what HAML does but is a lot easier (for me at least) to use since its built right into my text editor. I think just because of that I’d never bother with HAML.
Michelle McCausland

Really enjoyed the video. Definitely going to start using sass and haml, not too sure about coffeescript yet :)
Kit Dix-Pincott

Not a fan of pre-processors for CSS, they are completely unnecessary and add an unneeded level of complexity to a development environment. They basically are for front-end devs who can’t code cross-browser CSS properly. I also think they get in the way of newbies getting down and dirty with cross-browser issues that they should be aware of and would be if they developed with pure CSS.
- Byron Houwens
  
  You can’t use preprocessors for CSS without knowing CSS first (not effectively anyway). They’re just there to make your stylesheets way more DRY and make your work a lot easier/faster by introducing programming concepts into CSS.
LouisLazaris

Preprocessors have nothing to do with cross-browser issues. Preprocessors help you (among other things) to create modular, reusable code that prevents you from repeating the same styles over and over. Mixins are like functions that can be reused, and one of the things they do is help with vendor prefixes, so you don’t have to repeat 5 lines for a single transition.

You should definitely have a closer look at stuff like Sass. No, it’s not a replacement for learning CSS, that’s a requirement to use Sass. But it helps the workflow and productivity immensely.
M S

Sucky Development, to me, is when people insist on constantly inventing their own new syntaxes to pile on top of the existing ones, and each others.

Frameworks, on top of frameworks, on top of frameworks, on top of frameworks.
Each with their own shitty low-contrast site, as only documentation.

Compare the resources available on the web for learning css properly, with those for sass, or pfsaff, or plaff, or whatever the H all those competing frameworks are called.