
Sorry devs, Twitter Bootstrap isn't a "skill" - KurtElster
http://ethercycle.com/blog/index.php?entry=323
======
atacrawl
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)

~~~
if_by_whisky
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
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".

~~~
if_by_whisky
I think to a recruiter, bootstrap, backbone, c++, CAD, flask, etc... Are all
just words to match up. That's all I meant when I called it a buzzword.

------
examancer
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.

~~~
jeffgreco
Strongly agree here. Prototyping is an increasingly important part of a
developer's job, and Bootstrap is a great tool.

------
benatkin
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?

------
mildtrepidation
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]

------
carsongross
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?

------
diminoten
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.

------
gibbitz
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.

------
bdcravens
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)

------
donretag
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.

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

------
coreymgilmore
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
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
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.

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

------
Slix
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.

------
Zikes
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.

------
huangc10
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?

