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Bourbon vs Sass: What are the differences?

## Introduction
Bourbon and Sass are popular tools used in web development for creating style sheets. Both tools have their strengths and differences which make them unique in their own way.

1. **Syntax**: Sass is a CSS preprocessor that extends CSS with variables, mixins, and functions, allowing for more dynamic stylesheets. Bourbon, on the other hand, is a lightweight mixin library for Sass, providing a set of handy mixins to accelerate development.

2. **Functionality**: Sass provides more overall functionality as it allows for the creation of variables, functions, and control structures, whereas Bourbon primarily offers mixins for common CSS properties like gradients and transitions.

3. **Customizability**: Sass allows for greater customization as developers can create their own functions and mixins, tailor-made for specific projects. Bourbon, on the other hand, is less customizable as it offers a fixed set of mixins that cannot be easily extended.

4. **Compatibility**: Sass is compatible with various frameworks and libraries, making it a versatile choice for front-end developers. Bourbon, while being a useful tool, may have limitations in terms of compatibility with certain frameworks or architectures.

5. **Learning Curve**: Sass might have a steeper learning curve for beginners due to its extensive features and functionality, while Bourbon can be easier to grasp for those looking for a more straightforward approach to CSS preprocessing.

6. **Community Support**: Sass has a larger community base and more extensive documentation, making it easier to find resources and assistance when working with the tool, while Bourbon, although well-supported, may have a smaller community compared to Sass. 

In Summary, Bourbon and Sass offer different approaches to CSS preprocessing, with Sass providing more extensive functionality and customization options, while Bourbon focuses on simplicity and speed for common CSS tasks.
Advice on Bourbon and Sass
awesomebanana2018
Needs advice
on
PostCSSPostCSSSassSass
and
StylusStylus

Originally, I was going to start using Sass with Parcel, but then I learned about Stylus, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and PostCSS, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

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Replies (2)
Recommends
on
PostCSSPostCSS

You're not correct with saying "vs Postcss". You're using Less/Sass/Stylus/... to produce "CSS" (maybe extended means it has some future features) and then in any case PostCSS will play (it is shipped with Parcel/NextJS/CRA/...)

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Decisions about Bourbon and Sass
Saulius Kolesinskas
Engineering Manager at Vinted · | 5 upvotes · 20.1K views

We extensively use Sass and CSS Modules as our styling solution at Vinted. Even though we considered adopting a CSS-in-JS library, we ultimately leaned towards the flexibility that Sass and CSS Modules offer.

Vinted also has an internal design system where Storybook is used for development and documentation.

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Noel Broda
Founder, CEO, CTO at NoFilter · | 2 upvotes · 15.6K views

We know that Sass is not a replace for CSS, but in my mind there is no CSS with no Sass.

One of the first complement/plugins I add to the environment, are the Sass processing files/demons.

I couldn't imagine going back to pure CSS. Sass is even the way to go, regarding Styled Components, CSS Modules, and all the other options.

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Cory Bell

JSS is makes a lot of sense when styling React components and styled-components is a really nice implementation of JSS. I still get to write pure CSS, but in a more componentized way. With CSS post-processors like SASS and LESS, you spend a lot of time deciding where your .scss or .less files belong, which classes should be shared, and generally fighting the component nature of React. With styled-components, you get the best of CSS and React. In this project, I have ZERO CSS files or global CSS classes and I leverage mixins quite a bit.

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Pros of Bourbon
Pros of Sass
  • 14
    Simple mixins
  • 3
    Lightweight
  • 3
    No javascript
  • 613
    Variables
  • 594
    Mixins
  • 466
    Nested rules
  • 410
    Maintainable
  • 300
    Functions
  • 149
    Modular flexible code
  • 143
    Open source
  • 112
    Selector inheritance
  • 107
    Dynamic
  • 96
    Better than cs
  • 5
    Used by Bootstrap
  • 3
    If and for function
  • 2
    Better than less
  • 1
    Inheritance (@extend)
  • 1
    Custom functions

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Cons of Bourbon
Cons of Sass
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 6
      Needs to be compiled

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    What is Bourbon?

    Bourbon is a library of pure sass mixins that are designed to be simple and easy to use. No configuration required. The mixins aim to be as vanilla as possible, meaning they should be as close to the original CSS syntax as possible.

    What is Sass?

    Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.

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    What companies use Bourbon?
    What companies use Sass?
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    What tools integrate with Bourbon?
    What tools integrate with Sass?

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    What are some alternatives to Bourbon and Sass?
    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
    Python
    Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
    Node.js
    Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
    HTML5
    HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.
    PHP
    Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
    See all alternatives