Bootstrap: Thoughts, Rants and Defending My Stance

It started with an innocent tweet.

@Sodevious have you used twitter bootstrap? Thoughts?

— Joshua Acosta (@Josh_Acosta) June 24, 2013

And then it grew into something much larger… here are my thoughts on Twitter’s Bootstrap.

I’ve used Bootstrap a lot. I get why people like it, but I personally don’t. I don’t feel that it’s a “must use” framework - it has it’s place you just have to decide what that will be.

• Divitis - I really don’t need to explain this one.

• Collaboration can most definitely happen in teams with or without Bootstrap. Not every website on the internet is a result of it. It’s entirely possible to create a great, standards-compliant website in collaboration with others without using Bootstrap. I guess because it’s a widely used framework, it seems like a great choice for collaboration, but truthfully - how much better is it than anything else out there? This is the living, breathing web. As web workers, we are the ones that decide what best practices and standards are.

• Bootstrap is not for everyone or for every project; therefore I most definitely can invent a better wheel in some cases on the projects I work on. It’s arrogant to say that it’s a one size fits all, and if I’m not using it then there must be something wrong. Why would I want to? As a front-end developer I give a shit about my work, about how it’s perceived and about how it works within an organization, a team, or just with my own personal projects. Style guides and documentation exist for a reason.

• The existence of better frameworks is entirely true, because the opinion is relative to the user. Obviously time and money come into play, but that doesn’t mean that a bloated framework like Bootstrap is the answer. All of my opinions come from me actually using the framework day in and day out.

• An overused design gives your project and yourself a bad rap. Obviously, yes, the CSS is customizable. However, for quick projects & backend developers, it’s mostly used out-of-the-box. Therefore, its’ look is completely overused and as I said before, ‘hackety’. I’ve done bootstrap theme’ing before; and at the end of the day, I’d rather make dev & design decisions myself, than have to mold myself to fit an okay framework.

Bootstrap isn’t for everyone - it has a time and place, and a developer/designer has to make decisions whether to a) use a framework or b) choose to use bootstrap.