

Ask HN: LESS vs SCSS/SASS - jgv

Are there any glaring difference between the two that are not immediately apparent? They seems to share many similar concepts like mixins, variables, and inheritance. Has any one encountered problems with performance in production?
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blehn
There's a lot of misinformation in this thread. First of all, recent versions
of SASS include support for SCSS syntax, which means you can basically start
with plain old CSS and learn to use variables, mixins, nesting, etc from
there. Second, learning SASS syntax is not at all difficult. It's exactly like
CSS, except without curly braces and semicolons, and it's whitespace
sensitive. I find this results in much more readable code, and is much faster
to write than standard CSS. In fact, writing regular CSS now feels like a
chore, so I've started using Staticmatic (which supports HAML/SASS) when I
want to do quick static prototypes.

~~~
cheald
This is my experience exactly. Writing "raw" CSS makes me twitch now. Sass is
just beautiful, easy to read, maps naturally to markup structure, and is
terribly easy to maintain.

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chriseppstein
It's strange that no one has done this yet so I wrote up an explanation of how
the languages compare. It's too long to post here so I made a gist. I hope
this will help you learn the differences and evaluate the two projects:

<https://gist.github.com/674726>

I am the author of compass so I definately understand Sass more intimately
than Less. Please feel free to correct any misunderstandings I might have.
Also note: I am comparing the versions of Sass and Less that they suggest on
their main websites -- both have some very cool features and enhancements in
the pipeline.

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clyfe
I struggled with the exact same question the last few days. Semantically both
have the same features. You can find an informed comparison here:
<http://devtionary.com/?p=89>

My initial preference was Less, because sass seemed framgmented with 2
syntaxes, and also less seemed more aesthetic, but I ended choosing Sass for
the following reasons:

* Sass has Compass built over it <http://compass-style.org/docs/> and this alone is the biggeast win over Less

Compass is a framework that comes with a foundation of components :

\- compass core <http://compass-style.org/docs/reference/compass/>

\- many plugins for different needs (search github for compass), special
mentioning Susy liquid grid framework <https://github.com/ericam/compass-susy-
plugin>

\- with Compass I can monitor a whole directory of templates at once, and have
them instantly compiled when I save from the editor, not sure if Less can do
this

* Aptanta Studio 3 and few other IDE's know to syntax highlight sass and scss, not sure about less

* If you don't like the indentation syntax you can use the curly Scss, Scss and Sass are interoperable, you can call one from the other and vice versa

* The ruby version of Less is deprecated and I write a ruby based project (indeed, not all HN users are pythonists) Moreover, I don't like the idea on compiling the templates client side (as in less.js) and waste precios miliseconds, nor use an external interpreter (node.js)

~~~
nex3
It's not actually true that Sass and Less have the same features. Each has
some features the other doesn't, with Sass having substantially more than
Less. Notable examples include the ability to use variables in selectors, the
@extend directive, and a wealth of useful built-in functions. It's because of
these and other features that Compass can be built on Sass, where it couldn't
be built on Less.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Sass.

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jpcx01
Compass CSS is the killer feature of SASS I think.

~~~
jcDesigns
Agreed. Compass' CSS3 mixins make SASS pure awesome.

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stevelosh
I started using LessCSS back when SCSS didn't exist, so it was a choice
between SASS' brand new, backwards incompatible syntax and Less' "progressive
enhancement" philosophy.

Since then SASS has grown the SCSS syntax, but haven't really given me a
reason to bother switching.

Also: Less now has the even better less.js, which is handy for quickly
throwing together less stylesheets and _really_ fast on the command line
compared to the old Ruby version (an order of magnitude faster for 4,000+ line
files).

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kaylarose
I prefer LESS because, stylistic-ly (to me at least), it feels more like CSS
with extra sugar vs SASS which doesn't feel as natural. YMMV though.

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nicksergeant
LESS doesn't force you to change your CSS coding style too much, and provides
you with the power you need if you want to.

The most useful feature of LESS is simply nesting / indentation.

Since it's not syntactically different from CSS, you can start a LESS
stylesheet from a standard CSS stylesheet and move forward from there with
LESS.

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Semiapies
I've only used Less, though I may look into Sass again to get a more recent
comparison.

Compass hasn't interested me much.

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madhouse
I've only used LESS (and less.js, mostly the latter), haven't seen any
problems so far, neither performance, nor otherwise.

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mathgladiator
Neither until they have browser support for debugging issues (i.e. firebug
must be able to render the native LESS/SCSS ).

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jeffcoon
Experimented with Sass/Compass then Less; personally, strongly prefer Less.

