Why "no build" is appealing
You're or a new team member are onboarded to a project to make some CSS changes.
The project uses Sass, Less or another preprocessor.
Not knowing this, the generated CSS files are changed instead of the Sass files.
The changes are committed and pushed, but because they weren't added to the Sass files, they will be lost when the CSS files are re-generated in the future.
Or, if the Sass and CSS files become too out of sync, everyone will be too worried about losing changes to use the Sass files, so they will be abandoned and not used.
What if you change the correct files but don't know the magic command to generate the assets for that project?
I've seen things like this happen on numerous projects and is an example of why the "no build" approach is appealing.
Especially with enhancements to CSS, such as custom properties (variables) and nesting, a lot of the functionality from preprocessors can now be done with normal CSS.
This means the front-end build steps can be simplified or removed entirely, reducing the technical overhead and dependency cost, and it's easier for new Developers to get started.
Win, win!
- Oliver
