Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Bootstrap is where Wordpress and jQuery are - "good enough" for a large swathe of problems for a large number of people.

js gurus will decry jQuery - "learn to do it by hand"

php gurus will decry Wordpress - "it's a mess, learn to do it by hand"

and ... wow - front-end developers decrying bootstrap - "it's a mess, learn to do it by hand"

They're all not entirely wrong, but the specialist nature of their roles should not be ignored. Do you have a team of web devs ready to build something that is vital to your business and will be mission critical? Building on something that's not wordpress might be a good choice.

Are you trying to squeeze out every ounce of bandwidth performance and CPU optimization? Yeah, jQuery might not be the best choice.

But these libraries/products work "good enough" for so many people that it'll be a long time before anything dethrones them as the 'go to' tool for problem X. There's too much of an ecosystem built up around each one.

EDIT: I say this as someone who is generally pretty anti-wp, but I still recommend and use it for certain projects, it's just not my default go-to for everything.

I can see your point but, as someone who works with Bootstrap and jQuery, don't mix them. :) It's not the same kind of problem.

Even seasoned pros can gain something from jQuery. I know, I know: most jQuery-based code is bad, and the need for jQuery is becoming smaller everyday, but it still is among the nicest pieces of JavaScript. jQuery can save you time and boost your productivity without "imposing", as Bootstrap does (and any other CSS framework, as CSS is inherently global).

Bootstrap plugins require jQuery

Not to mention, a skilled web developer will take Bootstrap for the responsiveness and other extras and make it look good[1], or at least not like any other site.

[1] https://expo.getbootstrap.com/

Unless you mean a skilled back-end oriented web developer which doesn't want to spend much time in the front-end, I can't agree with you.

I don't think a skilled front-end developer would take Bootstrap just for responsiveness and extras. I mean, 3 or 4 mix-ins for building columns, offsets and rows? Button defaults and tabs? Would you grab a behemoth for this?

You can grab just the grid part of Bootstrap. It's 13kb. There's a lot of grids out there and people can make their own, but someone may be used to Bootstrap's.

Yes, of course, that would be a wise thing to do. No problem at all with that. But surely you can spare a few extra bytes by implementing your own, while still using essentially the same "battle-tested" Bootstrap approach.

Also, you wouldn't be constrained. Bootstrap means a predefined set of breakpoints for responsiveness: you can change their values, but not their number - you'll always get 4 breakpoints. Bootstrap also means a float-based grid system; you may want a flexbox based solution if you're targeting new browsers. And, of course, another pet peeve of mine: Bootstrap-powered HTML source-code looks all the same (a bunch of .row and .col.xs-N). Of course, you can use the mix-ins, but I think every Bootstrap user can relate: the mark-up for the user details page looks an awful lot like the order page. :) I actually prefer to write (and, even more, maintain) mark-up with semantic classes.

As I said above, it's not a big problem and using only the grid is a wise thing to do. I just don't think it adds that much; might as well implement it myself, targeted to my needs (and I'll do it once or twice, then reuse).

It's no longer "battle tested" if you're doing it yourself. You just created all the bugs Bootstrap fixed over the years. That's called reinventing the wheel. Is a few extra bytes worth it?

Why waste the time rewriting it?

I don't think writing a custom grid system is reinventing the wheel, since it's a task too small to even employ such consideration. It's like saying creating a folder structure for your project is reinventing the wheel.

Anyway, there's a rather diffuse line between reinventing the wheel and optimizing/fitting your own particular needs. I can easily agree that I've ended up - many times - in the first region while trying to reach the latter. Still, I'd say "no harm" if a) you got a cleaner, more legible source code; b) you got a better grasp of your solution; c) you're learning; and d) saving a few milliseconds from each of your users.

NIH-ism is apparently still strong with web developers. For consideration, sure, you can write your own PNG reader for your back-end by following the spec, and you might make it a bit faster than the commonly available libraries by coding in some assumptions about your use case, but should you? The answer is rarely yes (but rarely isn't never).

I'd say a PNG reader and a CSS grid system aren't quite comparable in scope and complexity. See my reply to the sister post. Also, bear in mind that "grid system" doesn't always mean "float-based,12-column and 4 breakpoint based grid system".

The article doesn't say "learn to do it by hand", the article says "pick a framework, but pick one that was originally intended for building production websites with".

Your comment is unhelpful, you're agreeing with the author. If you're not a front-end person or you just don't give a shit, Bootstrap is probably fine. But if you're tasked with building an extensible website, Bootstrap is like choosing to drive a semi-truck to pick up groceries. It works for the thoroughfares but you're gonna get stuck on the hills and in turns.

"Your comment is unhelpful, you're agreeing with the author" lolwut

I read the article instead of the clickbait headline, something that appears to be happening less and less on Hacker News. Is Eternal September finally here?

You seem to be complaining that the comment wasn't antagonistic enough. Is that what you mean to be doing?

Not at all. Was trying to elucidate on the comment and add some insight. It appeared OP just operated off the headline with some generic wisdom about Bootstrap being just fine for most things (which it absolutely is not). Upvotes are easy when they reassure the ego which was just threatened. The fact that a lot of egos on Hacker News appear to be tied to a shitty framework like Bootstrap is a bit upsetting, thus the Eternal September comment.

I said "good enough" for many people. Whether it's "fine" is immaterial - it's good enough and gets enough of a job done for people to move on to areas of the project.

EDIT: "generic wisdom about Bootstrap being just fine for most things (which it absolutely is not)"

Again, no, I said it's good enough for most people. That's not the same thing as "just fine for most things". I'd probably still posit that it is fine for most things, but that's not what my original position was.

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