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Using a find and replace instead of a variable holder is extremely bad practice. I should not have to copy/paste my site’s brand colors every time.

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.

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I used to write only in Sass for these same reasons, but switched back to CSS.

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.

That still doesn't account for mixins, which turn out to be very handy. Some examples here.[0]

[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.

> 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".

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.

Classes do suffice if you follow the convention of "small, atom-like css classes". I personally hate this style and prefer compositional css classes for a component or a structured object.

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