The problem is that a variable name like "orange" is a very bad variable name in case your design wants warnings to be in, say purple for whatever reason.

If the LESS variable is called "state-warning-text", you can define that to be purple without the bad aftertaste of having to use "orange" when you mean purple.

Thanks!

It was just an example, but what this means is that they are switching to semantic naming, rather than style naming.