I have the opposite experience. I’m in a React team that was doing BEM via Sass for a few years. Almost two years ago, we moved to Styled Components. The only real difference is that Styled Components automates
* naming of classes
* creating components whose sole purpose is styling
* eliminating unused stylesheets
It’s not like we became any less strict about specificity or used inline styles any more or less than we did with BEM. I find the differences to be purely logistical. Styled Components simply automates a lot of the grunt work and allows us to focus on more important things.
I'm with you... Also, with theme context(s) it's easy enough to re-use theme values while keeping actual component styling with the component and in isolation... you remove a component, and the styling goes with it.
I've found it much easier to not have left over or unused cruft with component styling JSS/StyledComponents etc.
* naming of classes
* creating components whose sole purpose is styling
* eliminating unused stylesheets
It’s not like we became any less strict about specificity or used inline styles any more or less than we did with BEM. I find the differences to be purely logistical. Styled Components simply automates a lot of the grunt work and allows us to focus on more important things.