6 min read
Do You Actually Need a CSS Preprocessor in 2026?
Sass, Less, and Stylus solved real problems. But CSS itself has caught up in a lot of areas. Here's when preprocessors still make sense — and when they don't.
csssasspreprocessors
Thoughts on software development, technology, and things I learn along the way.
Sass, Less, and Stylus solved real problems. But CSS itself has caught up in a lot of areas. Here's when preprocessors still make sense — and when they don't.
BEM looks ugly at first. Then you work on a large codebase without it, and suddenly those double underscores start looking beautiful.
Forget the fancy frameworks for a minute. These are the CSS concepts you need to genuinely understand before reaching for any tool.