6 ms·

Sorry devs, Twitter Bootstrap isn't a "skill"

27 points by KurtElster 13y ago

gibbitz 13y ago
As much as I want to agree with the backlash here, the pervasiveness of bootstrap as a "solution" to frontend by managers and engineers without frontend experience who then want to make it not look like every other startup website on the planet is what attributes to articles like this one. I can see it asa convenient mock-up tool, but iit's tight couplingto tthe markup and copious counter intuitive default styling does in fact lead to bloat in production websites. I understand that not all devs know frontend well enough to rapid prototype from scratch, but in production bootstrap is duct tape andchewing gum.
mildtrepidation 13y ago
Bootstrap is a very useful tool in some situations. As a developer with little to no graphic design ability (but a reasonable understanding of basic UI design), Bootstrap enables me to skip a massive chunk of work on projects that don't benefit from the attention of a designer (e.g. internal portals, administrative tools). Is it a skill? No, it's a tool. Being able to use it involves some skill with HTML, CSS, and possibly Javascript. Does it belong on a resume? Why not? At worst it may not be relevant to everything you might apply for; at best it shows a familiarity with available utilities that, required for a given project or not, might come in handy or at least show you're open to and have worked with current alternatives to the everything-from-scratch approach that's sometimes but not always necessary or helpful when developing for the web. [edit] After going looking for an author citation, I see this is on the official blog of a digital agency, written by one of the partners, who refers to himself as a "titan of industry." That's just embarrassing. The ego is stifling, and the tone screams "nightmarish to work for." [/edit]
Slix 13y ago
As an intern, I don't think this is true. I had an employer express an interest in me because Bootstrap showed that I was passionate about working on projects in my own time (since it isn't taught in schools). They also used it internally.
donretag 13y ago
I had someone come in the other day with Netscape Navigator listed as a skill. If you have a separate Skills section, I probably wouldn't list it as a skill, but perhaps in the detailed description of your job. Ex: Created websites using Bootstrap and CSS. I hate writing resumes where your job basically becomes a bunch of buzzwords, but that is what tech employers are expecting.
cq 13y ago
I don't appreciate the condescending tone the author uses, both in the title of this article and in the article itself.
coreymgilmore 13y ago
The amount of times I have heard: "You don't need to write CSS, just use Bootstrap" or some variation is uncountable. Some thing that just adding a "class='btn...'" to an input instantly makes it a button (without linking the stylesheet or adding a "type=".
- bdcravens 13y ago
  I've all but forgotten the intricacies of the DOM due to jQuery. There's probably plenty of developers who have begun their careers in the past 5 years who probably don't know JavaScript as anything other than where they put their document.ready block. Ditto for frameworks like ActiveRecord and the ability to write SQL, etc. Is the lack of underlying knowledge the fault of the framework?
  - adyus 13y ago
    The blame may not entirely be on the framework, but it is certainly on their documentation. If something goes wrong, a developer should know which resources to use to solve the problem. Abstracting away the lower level stuff should not be synonymous to keeping it completely hidden and inaccessible. A good example is the AngularJS source code, which is commented enough for anyone to make sense of it after a read-through.
bdcravens 13y ago
If someone asks if you know it (or anything else) in an interview, then yes it is. A quick search on Dice shows over 200 job results listing this in the hiring req, including firms such as Deloitte. Hell, Gartner even lists an intern position and Twitter Bootstrap is a job requirement: http://www.dice.com/job/result/gartner/2604576300902 http://www.dice.com/job/result/gartner/2604576300902
examancer 13y ago
I disagree with the premise. Twitter Bootstrap is a skill in much the same way as Wordpress is a skill, even if its a less significant one than wordpress. Familiarity with bootstrap's internals, its less mixins, their sass equivalents, its inventory of javascript plugins, and how to integrate with it is a skill worth having in many situations. The article's closing statement "make something happen from scratch" is almost the antithesis of what it means to be a good developer. Not re-inventing the wheel, learning to integrate with existing solutions, is a skill you will find among the best developers. On its own, Twitter Bootstrap is not enough of a skill to get any job. It is worth something, though.
- deankeyton 13y ago
  "Twitter Bootstrap is a skill in much the same way as Wordpress is a skill" Oh honey...
- jeffgreco 13y ago
  Strongly agree here. Prototyping is an increasingly important part of a developer's job, and Bootstrap is a great tool.
benatkin 13y ago
TL;DR: The author doesn't like Bootstrap. The author says it's bloated and that it makes it seem the candidate's front-end skills are shabby. If you're hiring for a project that uses bootstrap might it be a good idea to hire someone who doesn't mind working with bootstrap? How would they communicate this? Perhaps by including it on their résumé?
atacrawl 13y ago
Ugh, I'm getting real tired of these snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism. Many job posts call for familiarity with Twitter Bootstrap, so is it proper to call out the applicants (or "kiddies," as the author derides) for responding in kind? It's bogus. And trashing applicants for internships is a bridge too far. (minor edits)
- Bahamut 13y ago
  Agreed - I see many job listings these days that mention knowledge of Twitter Bootstrap...you'd be stupid as an applicant not to mention being familiar with it given its pervasiveness. It helps you get by the HR filter, where the resume is what matters, which might mean littering it with terms that would otherwise be banal to the typical good developer.
- if_by_whisky 13y ago
  As an applicant, you'd be stupid not to target your resume with buzzwords based on trends you see in job descriptions. You are trying to get past the recruiter, who is literally going to crosscheck buzzwords on your application with those in the description. To call applicants kiddies for playing that game the way it's supposed to be played... well, it's just seems naive.
  - bradleyland 13y ago
    Except that "Twitter Bootstrap" isn't a buzzword at all; it's a collection of CSS, Javascripts, and HTML coding conventions that make it possible to quickly build websites. We put things in our job listing like, "familiarity with Backbone required". Is Backbone a buzzword? Is someone who uses Backbone less of a developer? Should I just automatically assume that anyone with developer after their name knows Backbone? Will this list of dumb, rhetorical questions ever end? The author of this post gets it completely wrong: "Claiming Bootstrap as evidence that you 'know' development is like claiming that changing your oil means you 'know' automotive engineering." Knowing Bootstrap does count as knowing development, whether Paul likes it or not. There's quite a bit to Bootstrap, and even if it only takes someone a couple of days to come up to speed with it, maybe I don't want to pay for those couple of days. Maybe I don't have a couple of days. Knowlege is a continuum. Once you gain a little, it's easy to look at everyone beneath you with a sense of contempt, but what's the point? What do you gain? Better yet, what are you giving back to the world? If we accept the author's message in whole, what action can we take to better ourselves? Sorry, but I can't see any dramatic improvement if we all stop asking about Twitter Bootstrap tomorrow. Atacrawl nailed it when he called this a, "snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism".
Zikes 13y ago
Familiarity with a variety of named frameworks is a staple of many web development job posting requirements, and a lot of developers like to nip the inevitable questions in the bud by listing their framework experience up front.
jontonsoup 13y ago
Have you considered that customizing Twitter Bootstrap without rewriting the entire framework is a skill?
diminoten 13y ago
Why is Twitter Bootstrap not a skill, but JBoss, Hibernate, Django, heck even Node.js, etc. a skill (perhaps I'm putting words in the author's mouth, but I doubt he'd have the same opinion of a resumé with those skills listed)? According to this guy, you're only allowed to list the languages you use as skills, not the tools you use within those languages.
carsongross 13y ago
Twitter Bootstrap is absolutely a skill. Knowing the ins and outs of how the grid works, where to pad, how to effectively use the javascript components, etc. all involve experience and programming ability. Far beyond unzipping a flipping file, as the author suggests. Claiming Bootstrap as evidence that you "know" development is like claiming that changing your oil means you "know" automotive engineering No, it's like claiming "familiar with the SBC engine", which is a very useful skill to have if someone is hiring an employee to work on chevys, isn't it?
ddw 13y ago
Maybe people should stop putting Bootstrap in their resume when companies stop putting Bootstrap in their job postings.
huangc10 13y ago
bs article. agree with all the comments. imo, i'd rather know that an applicant knows twitter bootstrap than not. although not exactly similar...it's like saying you know how to use jquery. sure you didn't write jquery, but you can utilize it's libraries. bootstrap is like that for css and some js. why not put it in?

27 points by KurtElster 13y ago

As much as I want to agree with the backlash here, the pervasiveness of bootstrap as a "solution" to frontend by managers and engineers without frontend experience who then want to make it not look like every other startup website on the planet is what attributes to articles like this one. I can see it asa convenient mock-up tool, but iit's tight couplingto tthe markup and copious counter intuitive default styling does in fact lead to bloat in production websites. I understand that not all devs know frontend well enough to rapid prototype from scratch, but in production bootstrap is duct tape andchewing gum.

mildtrepidation 13y ago

Bootstrap is a very useful tool in some situations. As a developer with little to no graphic design ability (but a reasonable understanding of basic UI design), Bootstrap enables me to skip a massive chunk of work on projects that don't benefit from the attention of a designer (e.g. internal portals, administrative tools). Is it a skill? No, it's a tool. Being able to use it involves some skill with HTML, CSS, and possibly Javascript. Does it belong on a resume? Why not? At worst it may not be relevant to everything you might apply for; at best it shows a familiarity with available utilities that, required for a given project or not, might come in handy or at least show you're open to and have worked with current alternatives to the everything-from-scratch approach that's sometimes but not always necessary or helpful when developing for the web. [edit] After going looking for an author citation, I see this is on the official blog of a digital agency, written by one of the partners, who refers to himself as a "titan of industry." That's just embarrassing. The ego is stifling, and the tone screams "nightmarish to work for." [/edit]

Slix 13y ago

As an intern, I don't think this is true. I had an employer express an interest in me because Bootstrap showed that I was passionate about working on projects in my own time (since it isn't taught in schools). They also used it internally.

donretag 13y ago

I had someone come in the other day with Netscape Navigator listed as a skill. If you have a separate Skills section, I probably wouldn't list it as a skill, but perhaps in the detailed description of your job. Ex: Created websites using Bootstrap and CSS. I hate writing resumes where your job basically becomes a bunch of buzzwords, but that is what tech employers are expecting.

cq 13y ago

I don't appreciate the condescending tone the author uses, both in the title of this article and in the article itself.

coreymgilmore 13y ago

The amount of times I have heard: "You don't need to write CSS, just use Bootstrap" or some variation is uncountable. Some thing that just adding a "class='btn...'" to an input instantly makes it a button (without linking the stylesheet or adding a "type=".

bdcravens 13y ago
I've all but forgotten the intricacies of the DOM due to jQuery. There's probably plenty of developers who have begun their careers in the past 5 years who probably don't know JavaScript as anything other than where they put their document.ready block. Ditto for frameworks like ActiveRecord and the ability to write SQL, etc. Is the lack of underlying knowledge the fault of the framework?
- adyus 13y ago
  The blame may not entirely be on the framework, but it is certainly on their documentation. If something goes wrong, a developer should know which resources to use to solve the problem. Abstracting away the lower level stuff should not be synonymous to keeping it completely hidden and inaccessible. A good example is the AngularJS source code, which is commented enough for anyone to make sense of it after a read-through.

bdcravens 13y ago

If someone asks if you know it (or anything else) in an interview, then yes it is. A quick search on Dice shows over 200 job results listing this in the hiring req, including firms such as Deloitte. Hell, Gartner even lists an intern position and Twitter Bootstrap is a job requirement: http://www.dice.com/job/result/gartner/2604576300902 http://www.dice.com/job/result/gartner/2604576300902

examancer 13y ago

I disagree with the premise. Twitter Bootstrap is a skill in much the same way as Wordpress is a skill, even if its a less significant one than wordpress. Familiarity with bootstrap's internals, its less mixins, their sass equivalents, its inventory of javascript plugins, and how to integrate with it is a skill worth having in many situations. The article's closing statement "make something happen from scratch" is almost the antithesis of what it means to be a good developer. Not re-inventing the wheel, learning to integrate with existing solutions, is a skill you will find among the best developers. On its own, Twitter Bootstrap is not enough of a skill to get any job. It is worth something, though.

deankeyton 13y ago
"Twitter Bootstrap is a skill in much the same way as Wordpress is a skill" Oh honey...
jeffgreco 13y ago
Strongly agree here. Prototyping is an increasingly important part of a developer's job, and Bootstrap is a great tool.

benatkin 13y ago

TL;DR: The author doesn't like Bootstrap. The author says it's bloated and that it makes it seem the candidate's front-end skills are shabby. If you're hiring for a project that uses bootstrap might it be a good idea to hire someone who doesn't mind working with bootstrap? How would they communicate this? Perhaps by including it on their résumé?

atacrawl 13y ago

Ugh, I'm getting real tired of these snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism. Many job posts call for familiarity with Twitter Bootstrap, so is it proper to call out the applicants (or "kiddies," as the author derides) for responding in kind? It's bogus. And trashing applicants for internships is a bridge too far. (minor edits)

Bahamut 13y ago
Agreed - I see many job listings these days that mention knowledge of Twitter Bootstrap...you'd be stupid as an applicant not to mention being familiar with it given its pervasiveness. It helps you get by the HR filter, where the resume is what matters, which might mean littering it with terms that would otherwise be banal to the typical good developer.
if_by_whisky 13y ago
As an applicant, you'd be stupid not to target your resume with buzzwords based on trends you see in job descriptions. You are trying to get past the recruiter, who is literally going to crosscheck buzzwords on your application with those in the description. To call applicants kiddies for playing that game the way it's supposed to be played... well, it's just seems naive.
- bradleyland 13y ago
  Except that "Twitter Bootstrap" isn't a buzzword at all; it's a collection of CSS, Javascripts, and HTML coding conventions that make it possible to quickly build websites. We put things in our job listing like, "familiarity with Backbone required". Is Backbone a buzzword? Is someone who uses Backbone less of a developer? Should I just automatically assume that anyone with developer after their name knows Backbone? Will this list of dumb, rhetorical questions ever end? The author of this post gets it completely wrong: "Claiming Bootstrap as evidence that you 'know' development is like claiming that changing your oil means you 'know' automotive engineering." Knowing Bootstrap does count as knowing development, whether Paul likes it or not. There's quite a bit to Bootstrap, and even if it only takes someone a couple of days to come up to speed with it, maybe I don't want to pay for those couple of days. Maybe I don't have a couple of days. Knowlege is a continuum. Once you gain a little, it's easy to look at everyone beneath you with a sense of contempt, but what's the point? What do you gain? Better yet, what are you giving back to the world? If we accept the author's message in whole, what action can we take to better ourselves? Sorry, but I can't see any dramatic improvement if we all stop asking about Twitter Bootstrap tomorrow. Atacrawl nailed it when he called this a, "snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism".

Zikes 13y ago

Familiarity with a variety of named frameworks is a staple of many web development job posting requirements, and a lot of developers like to nip the inevitable questions in the bud by listing their framework experience up front.

jontonsoup 13y ago

Have you considered that customizing Twitter Bootstrap without rewriting the entire framework is a skill?

diminoten 13y ago

Why is Twitter Bootstrap not a skill, but JBoss, Hibernate, Django, heck even Node.js, etc. a skill (perhaps I'm putting words in the author's mouth, but I doubt he'd have the same opinion of a resumé with those skills listed)? According to this guy, you're only allowed to list the languages you use as skills, not the tools you use within those languages.

carsongross 13y ago

Twitter Bootstrap is absolutely a skill. Knowing the ins and outs of how the grid works, where to pad, how to effectively use the javascript components, etc. all involve experience and programming ability. Far beyond unzipping a flipping file, as the author suggests. Claiming Bootstrap as evidence that you "know" development is like claiming that changing your oil means you "know" automotive engineering No, it's like claiming "familiar with the SBC engine", which is a very useful skill to have if someone is hiring an employee to work on chevys, isn't it?

ddw 13y ago

Maybe people should stop putting Bootstrap in their resume when companies stop putting Bootstrap in their job postings.

huangc10 13y ago

bs article. agree with all the comments. imo, i'd rather know that an applicant knows twitter bootstrap than not. although not exactly similar...it's like saying you know how to use jquery. sure you didn't write jquery, but you can utilize it's libraries. bootstrap is like that for css and some js. why not put it in?