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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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Pros of Bourbon
- Simple mixins14
- Lightweight3
- No javascript3
Pros of Sass
- Variables613
- Mixins594
- Nested rules466
- Maintainable410
- Functions300
- Modular flexible code149
- Open source143
- Selector inheritance112
- Dynamic107
- Better than cs96
- Used by Bootstrap5
- If and for function3
- Better than less2
- Inheritance (@extend)1
- Custom functions1
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Cons of Bourbon
Cons of Sass
- Needs to be compiled6