Question about LESS

What one must remember about anything in web development, is that it is much better to know how to do something without any 'helpers', that way you can make an informed decission on the helpers viability. That goes for the use of frameworks, sass/less, jQuery and templates, if you do not know how to build a web site using all the latest standards and methods without them, then one ends up stuck in the past, building sites without any originality, only including features other think of, and having no future beyond following the crowd.

Learning how to use the latest specs and methods, will always ensure a better future than something that hides the how and why of development.

Dont bother with less or sass unless you are in a position where you are forced into using it/them. Why not use pug to write html?

Less and sass and pug and jade or whatever one likes to call these complete waste of time options are purely there to appease the web-developer and make them feel they are more skilled than what they really are.

If you're going to spend time learning anything then learn a server language and javascript or jquery - things which you will find are a necessity to enhance your possibilities of producing more complex work.

Let's say you're using Bootstrap layouts and the client is undecided about everything.  He wants to see a lot of changes made to the CSS.  You can pull your hair out making all the changes in multiple media queries or you can leverage your project with LESS or SASS variables & mixins.   Bootstrap 3 uses LESS.  Bootstrap 4 uses SASS. 

Bootstrap 3 Less Workflow Tutorial | Experience Design at Hello Erik

http://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.3/customize/#less-variables

Do you need to learn it?  That's a decision only you can make.

Nancy

W3Schools.com, while helpful, is NOT complete when it comes to all of the options available for developers.

LESS still uses standard CSS, it's not an entirely new language, but essentially an add-on that allows you to do more with CSS. It's actually pretty simple once you've got a firm grasp on CSS itself and if you have a little experience with other scripting languages like .js or .php.

It's also, by no means, essential learning for all developers. Most can go about their day, blissfully unaware that it exists and never have it come up in their professional lives. Others, it may be a requirement of obtaining employment with a large development house where many people will be working on the same files.

http://lesscss.org/ has everything you need to get started if you want to learn how to work with it. Here's some DW-specific information on it: Using CSS preprocessors in Dreamweaver

Personally, I don't use it much at all. My stylesheets are kept simple enough, in the majority of situations, that the benefits of LESS are pretty minimal or non-existent. But for sites with vast amounts of CSS, it can definitely be a big time saver.