6 ms·

The demise of CSS seems a little dramatic. Sass looks sort of cool, and I'm glad it exists, but it seems more like a small nicety rather than a fundamental, we

by jeff18 17y ago

The demise of CSS seems a little dramatic. Sass looks sort of cool, and I'm glad it exists, but it seems more like a small nicety rather than a fundamental, web development game changer.

dbz 17y ago
Exactly. CSS changed html dramatically. Sass most certainly does not do the same for CSS. If anything, imho, CSS will evolve to allow some of the "oh great and wonderful" Sass `abilities`. Okay fine. I'll admit it. I'm hugely disappointed after reading a title like that- and an article like that. The exact phrase isn't coming to mind, but it's something like "All developers are excited about their new technology and think it will change the future" (But in reality it wont matter in five years).
- jlong 17y ago
  To be fair this isn't my technology. I didn't invent Sass. But having used it for over two years now I can say it is a huge improvement over CSS. And yes hopefully the features found in Sass will eventually make it into CSS, but if it replaces CSS or is incorporated into CSS isn't that the same thing?
  - dbz 17y ago
    There is a slight difference conceptually. The goal/concept of CSS is to simply html AND provide a means to generate advanced layouts (while keeping the simplicity). The goal/concept of Sass is to speed up the process of writing CSS because well, even if you know what you want, it's pretty damn time consuming. (Note: I say the exact same thing about html and will prove a `post script`.) And when I said it would incorporate some of the features, I really meant "Eventually CSS may become a very primitive scripting language with variables and functions," but I didn't quite say that because at the same time I'm thinking "JAVASCRIPT!" So to be honest, imho, CSS will never incorporate anything from Sass- ever. However, there is a good chance text editors (inferable via my `post script`) will. P.S I recently pounced upon a project called zen coding: http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/ http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/ Does pretty much the same thing, but with html. It's a plugin and there is support for different editors. It's pretty awesome- By does pretty much the same thing, I mean it allows you to write html code very quickly by writing in a "shorthand."
    - Rusky 17y ago
      It would make sense for CSS to have constants, thought not variables in the javascript sense.
    - charlesr 17y ago
      The next version of Zen Coding is going to support Haml: http://twitter.com/zen_coding/status/7665962389 http://twitter.com/zen_coding/status/7665962389 They may look similar, but you quickly realise they're not if you actually give them a decent try out.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  Is it, "Programmers tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term, and underestimate the impact in the long term"?
  - dbz 17y ago
    I think you got both of those wrong >.< I would say, although it can be easily argued I don't the life long experience needed to make this conclusion, that Programmers tend to overestimate the impact in the long term. Although, the first clause, which you wrote, may also be applied in a separate but true context. Again, just my humble opinion from empirical evidence of articles/blogs/past-technologies and logical deduction.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      This quote isn't mine. I forget where I heard about it the other day, but apparently it was originally stated by Roy Amara, and is sometimes referred to as Amara's Law. Though it wasn't originally about programmers, just an inclusive "We."
    - dbz 17y ago
      Ah. Now that you mention it, the quote in the context of technology in general makes much more sense. Seeing as new web and programming technologies are created every day, it would be hard to fit everything into those categories, but physical technologies are much different because in order for someone like me to see them, they have gone through lots of stages of refinement and in most cases the idea doesn't get far enough for me to see it. Web apps, however, are relatively easy to make (compared to designing, creating, and then mass producing your new toothpaste dispensing toothbrush).
tjogin 17y ago
Yeah, Sass spells CSS's demise the same way PHP spelled HTML's. That is to say that it can never replace it, that the success of Sass is contingent on the continued success of CSS, and that the "demise" of CSS would also be the demise of Sass.
- chriseppstein 17y ago
  You didn't read the article very well. he simply states that it would be used by fewer users directly.
  - tjogin 17y ago
    And how does that spell the "demise" of CSS?
    - nex3 17y ago
      The idea is that it's the demise of CSS as the primary language used to style webpages. CSS would still be used as a compile target, but most people would write in higher-level languages like Sass or its descendants. "Demise" here is probably too strong -- a better word might be "waning".
      - tjogin 17y ago
        First off, "most people" won't be using Sass instead of writing CSS directly, any time soon. Sass hasn't really been picked up at all in the design community (who are the primary users of CSS), it's a programmer's solution to a programmer's problem — the designers' point of view seems to be that Sass doesn't solve any of their problems, it only adds complexity. Now, I like Sass just fine, but this isn't about me, this is about the retarded "idea" that Sass would somehow spell CSS's "demise" (and that's assuming we completely ignore that Sass produces CSS — the very thing which demise it is supposed to cause).
        nex3 17y ago
        Sass is definitely not targeted at programmers, and it certainly doesn't just solve "a programmer's problem". As one of the users (a designer, incidentally) put it recently on the mailing list: Sass is for people who write CSS. This includes designers, programmers, and anyone in between. It has users from everywhere on this continuum who love it.
gvb 17y ago
Sass is DRY applied to CSS. While that is not a very revolutionary concept (we have had preprocessors for many, many years), it has a revolutionary effect on CSS. Its effect on the effort to generate CSS and especially the effort it takes to maintain CSS is revolutionary.

by jeff18 17y ago

The demise of CSS seems a little dramatic. Sass looks sort of cool, and I'm glad it exists, but it seems more like a small nicety rather than a fundamental, web development game changer.

dbz 17y ago

Exactly. CSS changed html dramatically. Sass most certainly does not do the same for CSS. If anything, imho, CSS will evolve to allow some of the "oh great and wonderful" Sass `abilities`. Okay fine. I'll admit it. I'm hugely disappointed after reading a title like that- and an article like that. The exact phrase isn't coming to mind, but it's something like "All developers are excited about their new technology and think it will change the future" (But in reality it wont matter in five years).

jlong 17y ago
To be fair this isn't my technology. I didn't invent Sass. But having used it for over two years now I can say it is a huge improvement over CSS. And yes hopefully the features found in Sass will eventually make it into CSS, but if it replaces CSS or is incorporated into CSS isn't that the same thing?
- dbz 17y ago
  There is a slight difference conceptually. The goal/concept of CSS is to simply html AND provide a means to generate advanced layouts (while keeping the simplicity). The goal/concept of Sass is to speed up the process of writing CSS because well, even if you know what you want, it's pretty damn time consuming. (Note: I say the exact same thing about html and will prove a `post script`.) And when I said it would incorporate some of the features, I really meant "Eventually CSS may become a very primitive scripting language with variables and functions," but I didn't quite say that because at the same time I'm thinking "JAVASCRIPT!" So to be honest, imho, CSS will never incorporate anything from Sass- ever. However, there is a good chance text editors (inferable via my `post script`) will. P.S I recently pounced upon a project called zen coding: http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/ http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/ Does pretty much the same thing, but with html. It's a plugin and there is support for different editors. It's pretty awesome- By does pretty much the same thing, I mean it allows you to write html code very quickly by writing in a "shorthand."
  - Rusky 17y ago
    It would make sense for CSS to have constants, thought not variables in the javascript sense.
  - charlesr 17y ago
    The next version of Zen Coding is going to support Haml: http://twitter.com/zen_coding/status/7665962389 http://twitter.com/zen_coding/status/7665962389 They may look similar, but you quickly realise they're not if you actually give them a decent try out.
steveklabnik 17y ago
Is it, "Programmers tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term, and underestimate the impact in the long term"?
- dbz 17y ago
  I think you got both of those wrong >.< I would say, although it can be easily argued I don't the life long experience needed to make this conclusion, that Programmers tend to overestimate the impact in the long term. Although, the first clause, which you wrote, may also be applied in a separate but true context. Again, just my humble opinion from empirical evidence of articles/blogs/past-technologies and logical deduction.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    This quote isn't mine. I forget where I heard about it the other day, but apparently it was originally stated by Roy Amara, and is sometimes referred to as Amara's Law. Though it wasn't originally about programmers, just an inclusive "We."
  - dbz 17y ago
    Ah. Now that you mention it, the quote in the context of technology in general makes much more sense. Seeing as new web and programming technologies are created every day, it would be hard to fit everything into those categories, but physical technologies are much different because in order for someone like me to see them, they have gone through lots of stages of refinement and in most cases the idea doesn't get far enough for me to see it. Web apps, however, are relatively easy to make (compared to designing, creating, and then mass producing your new toothpaste dispensing toothbrush).

tjogin 17y ago

Yeah, Sass spells CSS's demise the same way PHP spelled HTML's. That is to say that it can never replace it, that the success of Sass is contingent on the continued success of CSS, and that the "demise" of CSS would also be the demise of Sass.

chriseppstein 17y ago
You didn't read the article very well. he simply states that it would be used by fewer users directly.
- tjogin 17y ago
  And how does that spell the "demise" of CSS?
  - nex3 17y ago
    The idea is that it's the demise of CSS as the primary language used to style webpages. CSS would still be used as a compile target, but most people would write in higher-level languages like Sass or its descendants. "Demise" here is probably too strong -- a better word might be "waning".
    - tjogin 17y ago
      First off, "most people" won't be using Sass instead of writing CSS directly, any time soon. Sass hasn't really been picked up at all in the design community (who are the primary users of CSS), it's a programmer's solution to a programmer's problem — the designers' point of view seems to be that Sass doesn't solve any of their problems, it only adds complexity. Now, I like Sass just fine, but this isn't about me, this is about the retarded "idea" that Sass would somehow spell CSS's "demise" (and that's assuming we completely ignore that Sass produces CSS — the very thing which demise it is supposed to cause).
      - nex3 17y ago
        Sass is definitely not targeted at programmers, and it certainly doesn't just solve "a programmer's problem". As one of the users (a designer, incidentally) put it recently on the mailing list: Sass is for people who write CSS. This includes designers, programmers, and anyone in between. It has users from everywhere on this continuum who love it.

gvb 17y ago

Sass is DRY applied to CSS. While that is not a very revolutionary concept (we have had preprocessors for many, many years), it has a revolutionary effect on CSS. Its effect on the effort to generate CSS and especially the effort it takes to maintain CSS is revolutionary.