Sass (not Haml) allows you to work at a significantly higher level than CSS. The parallel in programming languages might be Forth: the basics translate directly

Sass (not Haml) allows you to work at a significantly higher level than CSS. The parallel in programming languages might be Forth: the basics translate directly, but using the abstractions provided by the language you can make it work at a much higher level. In the case of Sass, abstraction is primarily provided by mixins and functions. Compass (http://compass-style.org http://compass-style.org) provides an excellent example of using these to write CSS at a much higher level.