4) Not having to think about the fact that HTML files are strings... thinking in terms of DOM structure instead.
The things it doesn't handle as well:
1) Micromanaging whitespace between tags (I know, there are solutions, but they're still awkward)
But in truth, HAML kind of reminds me of Rails in that it doesn't actually DO anything you can't do for yourself... but it does change how you think about/structure your code. I'm pretty sure that if I were to go back to writing raw HTML, I would structure/indent it like a HAML document... the same way my non-Rails apps end up looking a lot like Rails now that I've seen how that works.
1) Not making nesting mistakes
2) Less escaping junk(<? ?> or <% %> or whatever)
3) Generally fewer characters to wade through
4) Not having to think about the fact that HTML files are strings... thinking in terms of DOM structure instead.
The things it doesn't handle as well:
1) Micromanaging whitespace between tags (I know, there are solutions, but they're still awkward)
But in truth, HAML kind of reminds me of Rails in that it doesn't actually DO anything you can't do for yourself... but it does change how you think about/structure your code. I'm pretty sure that if I were to go back to writing raw HTML, I would structure/indent it like a HAML document... the same way my non-Rails apps end up looking a lot like Rails now that I've seen how that works.