The Trouble With Preprocessing Based on Future Specs

Lots of gold in this post from Chris Coyier. I agree with a lot of what he’s saying, but this passage really resonated with me:

[T]here are concepts that I think belong in an abstraction of a language and not the language itself. Variables could be an example here again. Preprocessor variables and native variables could co-exist and be useful in their own ways. If native CSS could do everything ever dreamed up in a preprocessor, it would be slow, complicated, and likely wouldn’t have seen the success that CSS has had as a language.

I could not agree more.

Note: I no longer use “native” in this context, but it remains in quoted material.