[jrajav]

I don't think he was going for a value pitch, just a brief intro. It's really difficult to judge the value of CSS preprocessors from one-line examples, since as you say they usually end up being longer. You would have to look at larger stylesheets to actually see where they shine. In other words, the benefit from preprocessors isn't constant, it's exponential. You trade off some added complexity for a much greater ability to organize, combine, and maintain the various parts of your stylesheets.