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I remember the first time I saw a friend's site made with Bootstrap, around 2011-2012. I was so impressed by his design skills! ...it was about 6 months later

I remember the first time I saw a friend's site made with Bootstrap, around 2011-2012. I was so impressed by his design skills! ...it was about 6 months later I discovered what Bootstrap was, after noticing half the websites I was visiting looked just like his.

ratww 5y ago
I also remember when developers that only knew and used Bootstrap started appearing. A university I worked at had a beautiful internal website, designed by a Design professor there and tested in students using all the famous methodologies. A few months after I left, a couple new developers were hired and decided to nuke the old design and reimplement it all using Bootstrap because they didn't know CSS/JS. It was never the same.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > I also remember when developers that only knew and used Bootstrap started appearing. They're called "new" developers. They don't have the same skillset of "experienced" developers. Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time.
  - radicalbyte 5y ago
    If your skillset is HTML + CSS then you're not a developer. You're more of a web designer. Or a masochist if you're actually trying to code with it (being turning complete).
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      If anything, a software engineer is more likely to reach for a CSS library like Bootstrap instead of designing and implementing their own styles.
      - radicalbyte 5y ago
        There are plenty of people who call themselves "frontend developers" whose skill set is: HTML, CSS + image editor (photoshop, indesign or whatever the current fad is).
        ratww 5y ago
        This kind of position is still pretty common in the enterprise and enterprise-centric consulting shops. Sometimes those developers are also called "designers" or "web designers" (despite doing more development/image editing than design itself). Btw, often the job-title is given by the company. Makes it kinda hard for developers to progress their careers.
    - Lammy 5y ago
      Reminds me of all the times I've seen licensed engineers gatekeep the word "engineer" from us computer people :)
    - mdbauman 5y ago
      I once had a "Lead Frontend Developer" who mostly did HTML and CSS (and was quite good at it) and could get by with jQuery to do various visual effects. We had a large contract to maintain a site that used AngularJS, and he convinced all the higher-ups that writing all the frontend code was my job because "Angular is more of a backend thing." I don't think I'd consider this guy a frontend developer given that he couldn't be bothered to learn a framework that falls within his job description. But we also had a UX team to actually design the visuals, so I don't think I'd put him in the designer camp with them either. What was he? "Lead CSS Guy?"
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      If your skillset is HTML+CSS, I think you can still be more of a developer than a designer. Someone else gives you mockups and you implement them. HTML+CSS can get you pretty far in a lot of cases without any JS required, though since HTML5, the spec includes interfaces to the Javascript APIs, as well as a whole bunch of stuff for accessibility. I enjoyed this post from a few months ago which helps give you a sense of the depth of HTML: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080348 . This person didn't even dive into the spec, just the MDN docs. To contrast this, a designer is someone who does things like visual branding and consistency, creating assets like logos, background images, maybe even vector graphics, and device breakpoints. HTML and CSS are also complex enough that you can even spend a significant time specializing in one/both.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > They're called "new" developers. Not necessarily. There's still plenty of experienced developers with multiple years of experience that only know a very limited set of technologies. And for years before Bootstrap, inexperienced developers often knew CSS and a bit of JS. And there is nothing wrong with those developers. My post is not a judgement on beginner developers, I think you're projecting this. It's rather a lamentation of how a certain technology ended up affecting both design and learning negatively. Also, I find it extremely wasteful and un-pragmatic to rewrite a well designed website from scratch for no benefit other than to the devs themselves. It was a loss for not only the students and teachers of the university, but also for those developers. > Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time. Not really if they actively avoid learning.
    - ramraj07 5y ago
      Negative is subjective. This is like someone shitting on the model T and Ford because now bugattis and Rolls royces aren’t being found in streets commonly. Bootstrap democratized accessible design. It might be vanilla and bland but no one had trouble navigating a bootstrap site so “negative” is a subjective judgement here.
      - ratww 5y ago
        Nobody is shitting on anything. This is a very uncharitable reading of my comment. Just because Bootstrap had some very good aspects, doesn't mean it also didn't have some negative ones. I find this idolatry of tools a very troubling aspect of our industry. It should be possible to reflect on the negative aspect of good tools without someone saying you're "shitting" on it. Also notice that I never complained about Bootstrap being vanilla or bland. The issue here was that something well designed and well tested was rewritten from scratch and replaced with something that ended up being inferior for no reason other than misguided developers. And "no one had trouble navigating a bootstrap site" is a bold claim, considering how flexible it was. In fact the main issue with the website I mentioned was the worsened navigation introduced by the developers.
  - kolanos 5y ago
    > They're called "new" developers. They don't have the same skillset of "experienced" developers. Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time. In my experience, the "experienced" developers produce inaccessible messes. While Bootstrap continues to be a web leader in accessibility.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  It was exactly the same with jQuery - there were a legion of people (older than me!) who could only "code" with jQuery. They'd never seen window.getElementById().
  - kolanos 5y ago
    > It was exactly the same with jQuery - there were a legion of people (older than me!) who could only "code" with jQuery. They'd never seen window.getElementById(). No, they'd seen window.getElementById() but quickly realized that DOM API manipulation wasn't consistent between browsers. The whole reason jQuery was created in the first place was to abstract these browser inconsistencies away into a single API.
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    As someone who started writing Javascript in 1997, when it came around, I would default to jQuery unless I had a very good reason not to.
    - jacobsenscott 5y ago
      jQuery still provides an objectively superior (more expressive, concise, and compatible) API for the dom. Yes, the cut an paste "you don't need jquery" solutions work 90% of the time. But jquery works 99.99% of the time and cover more of the gnarly edge cases that exist even on modern browsers.

ratww 5y ago

I also remember when developers that only knew and used Bootstrap started appearing. A university I worked at had a beautiful internal website, designed by a Design professor there and tested in students using all the famous methodologies. A few months after I left, a couple new developers were hired and decided to nuke the old design and reimplement it all using Bootstrap because they didn't know CSS/JS. It was never the same.

jonny_eh 5y ago
> I also remember when developers that only knew and used Bootstrap started appearing. They're called "new" developers. They don't have the same skillset of "experienced" developers. Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  If your skillset is HTML + CSS then you're not a developer. You're more of a web designer. Or a masochist if you're actually trying to code with it (being turning complete).
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    If anything, a software engineer is more likely to reach for a CSS library like Bootstrap instead of designing and implementing their own styles.
    - radicalbyte 5y ago
      There are plenty of people who call themselves "frontend developers" whose skill set is: HTML, CSS + image editor (photoshop, indesign or whatever the current fad is).
      - ratww 5y ago
        This kind of position is still pretty common in the enterprise and enterprise-centric consulting shops. Sometimes those developers are also called "designers" or "web designers" (despite doing more development/image editing than design itself). Btw, often the job-title is given by the company. Makes it kinda hard for developers to progress their careers.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Reminds me of all the times I've seen licensed engineers gatekeep the word "engineer" from us computer people :)
  - mdbauman 5y ago
    I once had a "Lead Frontend Developer" who mostly did HTML and CSS (and was quite good at it) and could get by with jQuery to do various visual effects. We had a large contract to maintain a site that used AngularJS, and he convinced all the higher-ups that writing all the frontend code was my job because "Angular is more of a backend thing." I don't think I'd consider this guy a frontend developer given that he couldn't be bothered to learn a framework that falls within his job description. But we also had a UX team to actually design the visuals, so I don't think I'd put him in the designer camp with them either. What was he? "Lead CSS Guy?"
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    If your skillset is HTML+CSS, I think you can still be more of a developer than a designer. Someone else gives you mockups and you implement them. HTML+CSS can get you pretty far in a lot of cases without any JS required, though since HTML5, the spec includes interfaces to the Javascript APIs, as well as a whole bunch of stuff for accessibility. I enjoyed this post from a few months ago which helps give you a sense of the depth of HTML: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27080348 . This person didn't even dive into the spec, just the MDN docs. To contrast this, a designer is someone who does things like visual branding and consistency, creating assets like logos, background images, maybe even vector graphics, and device breakpoints. HTML and CSS are also complex enough that you can even spend a significant time specializing in one/both.
- ratww 5y ago
  > They're called "new" developers. Not necessarily. There's still plenty of experienced developers with multiple years of experience that only know a very limited set of technologies. And for years before Bootstrap, inexperienced developers often knew CSS and a bit of JS. And there is nothing wrong with those developers. My post is not a judgement on beginner developers, I think you're projecting this. It's rather a lamentation of how a certain technology ended up affecting both design and learning negatively. Also, I find it extremely wasteful and un-pragmatic to rewrite a well designed website from scratch for no benefit other than to the devs themselves. It was a loss for not only the students and teachers of the university, but also for those developers. > Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time. Not really if they actively avoid learning.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    Negative is subjective. This is like someone shitting on the model T and Ford because now bugattis and Rolls royces aren’t being found in streets commonly. Bootstrap democratized accessible design. It might be vanilla and bland but no one had trouble navigating a bootstrap site so “negative” is a subjective judgement here.
    - ratww 5y ago
      Nobody is shitting on anything. This is a very uncharitable reading of my comment. Just because Bootstrap had some very good aspects, doesn't mean it also didn't have some negative ones. I find this idolatry of tools a very troubling aspect of our industry. It should be possible to reflect on the negative aspect of good tools without someone saying you're "shitting" on it. Also notice that I never complained about Bootstrap being vanilla or bland. The issue here was that something well designed and well tested was rewritten from scratch and replaced with something that ended up being inferior for no reason other than misguided developers. And "no one had trouble navigating a bootstrap site" is a bold claim, considering how flexible it was. In fact the main issue with the website I mentioned was the worsened navigation introduced by the developers.
- kolanos 5y ago
  > They're called "new" developers. They don't have the same skillset of "experienced" developers. Luckily, "new" developers become "experienced" over time. In my experience, the "experienced" developers produce inaccessible messes. While Bootstrap continues to be a web leader in accessibility.
radicalbyte 5y ago
It was exactly the same with jQuery - there were a legion of people (older than me!) who could only "code" with jQuery. They'd never seen window.getElementById().
- kolanos 5y ago
  > It was exactly the same with jQuery - there were a legion of people (older than me!) who could only "code" with jQuery. They'd never seen window.getElementById(). No, they'd seen window.getElementById() but quickly realized that DOM API manipulation wasn't consistent between browsers. The whole reason jQuery was created in the first place was to abstract these browser inconsistencies away into a single API.
- bdcravens 5y ago
  As someone who started writing Javascript in 1997, when it came around, I would default to jQuery unless I had a very good reason not to.
  - jacobsenscott 5y ago
    jQuery still provides an objectively superior (more expressive, concise, and compatible) API for the dom. Yes, the cut an paste "you don't need jquery" solutions work 90% of the time. But jquery works 99.99% of the time and cover more of the gnarly edge cases that exist even on modern browsers.