- Importing modules with zero performance impact. - Variables! Think how they help you in other languages. $primary is much more readable than some random hex

- Importing modules with zero performance impact. - Variables! Think how they help you in other languages. $primary is much more readable than some random hex code. - Functions! darken($primary, 10%), again much more readable than hex codes. - Helps avoiding duplication through several means, like mixins, loops and so on. - Forever forgetting vendor prefixes and effortlessly keeping up to date. - Creating sprites or base64 images automatically, never having to "craft" those by hand ever again. The list goes on and on. And the best thing, SCSS and Less are CSS backwards compatible, so you can choose whatever features you want and pretend you're writing just CSS. I was super anti-preprocessors for pretty much the same reasons you are. But the one day I tried them out and never looked back. Ignore gulp, grunt, webpack and whatever people tell you to use. Start super easy, with just the "compiler", and once something annoys you, look for a solution. Also pick up the features you want. I started using only variables and ignored the rest, and added more tricks to my repertoire as needed.