I find it way easier to install less with node & npm, than it is to setup ruby &...

Scottopherson · on Aug 25, 2015

Ruby's not required. The article doesn't mention Ruby but it mentions libsass (why Ruby is no longer required):

"This is great because Sass tends to be more favorable by front-end developers. It also compiles faster thanks to Libsass."

https://github.com/sass/libsass

lemevi · on Aug 25, 2015

> This is great because Sass tends to be more favorable by front-end developers

I don't understand what this mangled sentence means. How do they know what's favorable to front-end developers? Nobody asked me what I think. They did a valid random sample?

coldtea · on Aug 26, 2015

You know, they could always check relative watchers and other marks on GitHub for example.

Doesn't have to be an exact science. How do we know Knockout is less popular than Angular? And yet, we do.

lemevi · on Aug 26, 2015

https://github.com/less/less.js

12k stars, yeah throw it out, it's done.

https://github.com/sass/sass

6k stars, definitely more popular, if less stars means more popular. Obviously more front-end developers love sass! The evidence has spoken.

coldtea · on Aug 27, 2015

I didn't speak for any of them, so the sarcasm doesn't apply to me. Actually I've only ever used LESS.

That said, don't be so quick to just what's popular just by the relative size of the numbers. I'd also check which had a headstart and by what margin.

A 3 year project with 12k stars for example is not necessarily more popular NOW than a 1 year project with 6k stars.

That's why I advocated for several metrics.

mccada · on Aug 25, 2015

You can use LibSass which is written in C++, to avoid the Ruby dependencies. https://github.com/sass/libsass