

What I Learned Building Twitter Bootstrap - dcope
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/b95033c270af

======
NathanKP
Interesting... For some reason I had always assumed that Bootstrap was
associated more closely with Twitter because it had the word "twitter" in the
name.

Now I understand why some business are so concerned with preventing other
websites and people from using their name. I'm not saying that Twitter should
have demanded that these guys change the name of their framework to something
else, but this is a good object lesson of how using someone other company's
name can cause confusion.

In retrospect probably one of the biggest things that motivated me to
investigate Bootstrap was because it had Twitter in the name, and I had the
mindset "If Twitter uses it, then it must be good."

So I'm surprised to find out that it wasn't actually that deeply tied to
Twitter.

Edit: I went back to the website for Bootstrap and the website clearly says:

 _Built at Twitter by @mdo and @fat,_

versus here @fat is saying:

 _it isn’t actually maintained by a team at Twitter (nor was it ever)._

So now I'm actually more confused.

~~~
fat
Mark and I built bootstrap while we were employed at twitter on twitter
hardware. Also, undeniably it was largely influenced by our work there (and
later would largely influence a lot of the code at twitter as well as power
lots of projects both internally and publicly) – but it was never a company
mandated project. It was something that Mark and I came up with on our own and
pursued outside of work hours.

~~~
NathanKP
Okay thanks... I understand now. You started the project at Twitter, but it
wasn't owned by Twitter. I'm glad that Twitter didn't claim Bootstrap as
company owned code, because I and thousands of other people have really
enjoyed using it in our projects.

~~~
fizx
One of the reasons I worked at twitter is that they want you to open-source
virtually everything. They weren't likely to put up a fuss, and everyone was
really proud of bootstrap.

------
jenius
Dear fat,

This post comes off to me as cocky and untrue.

First, the general tone of this seems very pompous to me. To me, it reads: "I
know so much that even building the most popular project on github and
possibly of any library on the web can't teach me anything new." It might have
been a little more gracious perhaps to thank people for using and contributing
to the project...?

Also, you definitely learned something building bootstrap. I'm willing to bet
you learned a lot of things between the few major version updates and 2,500+
issues, most of which are closed. In fact, here's a presentation that _you
made_ detailing something you learned from bootstrap (accessibility,
specifically): <http://wordsbyf.at/2012/05/21/jsconf-argentina-2012/>

I'm really not trying to be that negative guy on hacker news, this was just my
immediate reaction upon reading the post. That being said, congrats on
building an immensely popular and important library, and here's to hoping that
you learn and always continue learning.

~~~
fat
hm… sorry it came off that way. :(

fwiw, the amount of technical things i've learned from working on bootstrap is
not proportional to the amount of work i've put into this project… at all.
But, i never expected it to be, and that's totally fine.

Have I learned any technical things? lol sure, of course!

Funnily, the accessibility thing you linked to wasn't really something I
learned building bootstrap… the presentation was all about how accessibility
is too hard to really learn… and you need to become a specialist, which is sad
times. Paul Irish wrote a great post about it a while back:
<http://paulirish.com/2012/accessibility-and-developers/>

maybe i learned that i knew nothing, but that was about it :P

My friend Dustin (who created this writing topic on medium) asked me to write
about the single most important thing i learned from working on bootstrap.

And for me, that single thing was that I love working with people and hate
working alone.

It took me a while to realize that what was bumming me out the most about
running bootstrap (and other projects) was that as they became more
successful, there was more of an expectation that i would be working on them
all the time (which meant the expectation that i would be working on them
independently/alone all the time).

That's ok from time to time, but isn't why I get excited about free software
and ultimately i became pretty depressed/negative about the whole thing.

I'm just now starting to identify what makes we want to continue to dedicate
all my free time to a project like bootstrap. And right now, the main
motivation is to spend time creating stuff with my favorite people.

I can assure you – it's definitely not to learn more about css/js !! :)

~~~
cloudsteam
Hi,

I just wanted to say thanks. I have been integrating bootstrap into my site
for the passed few months and I am happy to know it will look better then
otherwise ever would have. I still have some trouble figuring out why the hell
some parts don't work (can you recommend a debugging tool?) but all in all I
am pretty chuffed and can appreciate why it is popular.

Take it easy = )

PS - wtf was with the radioactive download bootstrap button on the download
page of the last release? I don't think you were involved with it, but I was
surprised to see it . EDIT> It has been removed and now is a normal download
button again.

~~~
fat
haha! mark loves these, i think he started doing them way back at zurb.

we took them away because they are _hooorible_ for perf – and were exposing a
memory leak bug in chrome i believe

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JuDue
What I want to know is... Why LESS and not SASS?

Seems to me, TBS is the only thing keeping LESS alive.

SASS/Compass seems to be the better choice? <http://css-tricks.com/sass-vs-
less/>

(Logic and Loops are big ticket items).

~~~
jayflux
From whispers I've heard within the TB community, is that it may at some point
jump from LESS to SASS. But right now its not a priority. Someone tell me if
im wrong here.

~~~
fat
ha, well that is definitely not happening anytime soon…

but, here is a whole thing on "why less" I wrote up about it a long while
back, and it still holds true today: <http://wordsbyf.at/2012/03/08/why-less/>

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sgdesign
Not what I expected from the link-baity HN post title, that post does not
actually tell us what he learned at all, if anything.

Not complaining about the post itself, just thought it'd be very cool to have
an actual "what I learned building bootstrap" post one day.

~~~
dreamdu5t
I was thinking the same thing. All I've learned is how much power/draw the
Twitter name has.

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owenjones
Makes me sad that all my post-work hacking on things has been by myself. As a
musician his description sounds similar to playing an instrument by myself;
fun but not as great as with a group of friends.

~~~
ctb9
Same here.

Is there an app with traction that helps people like us find fellow hackers to
collaborate with. If not, sounds like an idea right there. Want to help build
it?

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jquery
What I Learned from reading "What I Learned Building Twitter Bootstrap.":
Unironic "brogramming" is still alive and well. What a slap in the face of the
community that made bootstrap successful.

~~~
bonzoesc
If having fun making things with friends is "unironic brogramming," I'm proud
to be an unironic brogrammer.

~~~
jquery
No, but extreme arrogance and braggadocio is. The only thing missing from that
article was a keg stand in the top photo, to show just how little they need to
try to be awesome.

------
veidr
FWIW, I learned this same thing working cashier at a dry cleaning shop in my
teens.

TL;DR Hooking up with people you like and making something cool is way better
than doing something annoying and stressful that sucks.

------
crowdmatch2
There's a lot of truth to the notion of 'building things with friends' is what
fuels a lot of developers. I am the same way. I think the same thing can be
said for building a startup. It just has a completely different feel and
excitement when it's something mutually taken on with a friend.

Also major props to Bootstrap for everything they have done for the web.

------
DanBlake
Is twitter trying to claim ownership over bootstrap? I assume you 2 guys left
twitter to do this as-a-living. The post reads like a "Twitter does not own
this, we made it on our own time, Its just the two of us, etc. etc."

Do you even need to worry about this? Pretty sure since its open source you
guys are fine, unless something in your twitter employment contract says
otherwise. That being said, Bootstrap is a valuable asset to the web and I
think you would be not-paranoid in assuming that twitter might want to call it
a asset it owns.

Step 1 for you guys should really be moving from
<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/> to <http://domainyouownpersonally.com>

~~~
caniszczyk
The short answer is no, Twitter is not trying to overtake bootstrap. Although
we have some ownership of the code base, the community has definitely let its
mark on Bootstrap with Mark and Jacob's great leadership.

In fact, we have been working closely with Mark and Jacob on the bootstrap
transition. There are plans to migrate bootstrap into its own organization
soon and kick off an effort to migrate it to the MIT license, all supported by
Twitter.

Stay tuned for details!

~~~
fat
yep, twitter has been great. And mark and i didn't leave to start a bootstrap
support company :P

------
callmeed
I met a Twitter engineer at startup school who said any side projects had to
be approved by Twitter's legal team. Was this the case with Bootstrap?

Also, was it put on Twitter's GitHub account in order to increase visibility?

~~~
fat
yep, lots of legal hurdles to go through – took us like 6 months – but now
they have a full time opensource shepherd @cra which makes this _much_
smoother

~~~
caniszczyk
<3, thanks for the kudos

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smegel
Is Bootstrap mainly for CSS? Or should it be viewed as a fully-blown
alternative to HTML5BP? I would love to read a guide on how to incorporate
Bootstrap with other tools like HTML5BP and the Javascript framework of my
choice.

~~~
joshuacc
Bootstrap is primarily a CSS framework with some accompanying JavaScript
(jQuery) plugins to provide things like tooltips and popovers.

You can very easily use it with HTML5 Boilerplate. You incorporate it in
exactly the same way you would any external CSS file. And if you want to use
their JavaScript you add that the same way you add any other JavaScript.

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trustfundbaby
What stuck out to me was how you pursued this on _your own time_ ... does
Twitter not give its engineers time on the clock to pursue things like this?
How do you feel about that?

------
iguana
While this post is a bit on the brogramming side (I would actually love to
read what you learned from the project technically, and why you made certain
design decisions), I have to give you and @mdo props for building Bootstrap.

I have to say that Bootstrap is the best thing that has happened to client
side web development since jQuery, even if the web is doomed to drown in an
ocean of Bootstrap-looking sites.

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mikerg87
I am, for one, thankful you did this. I have been able to stand on your
shoulders and see farther. certainly the front end work I have built with
bootstrap and derivates has made the shallow end of the web I swim in better.

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runn1ng
Technical issue, but... is the "Recommend" button doing anything? (or supposed
to be doing?)

I push it and nothing happens.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Redirects here for me: [https://medium.com/m/signin?redirect=%2Fwhat-i-
learned-build...](https://medium.com/m/signin?redirect=%2Fwhat-i-learned-
building%2Fb95033c270af)

Check your javascript console for errors

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totaljohn
this project makes building a project with friends even more fun. thank you
for all your hard work on it.

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alwaysright
I think we all should just say thanks for building this, and nothing more,
well, perhaps thanks to Twitter for not claiming the code. We all should
aspire to do what fat and mdo did, build something out of passion, in our
spare time, that will be freely available for everyone. There is nothing that
anyone can say, (including them) that will take it away from them. They belong
in the hall of fame of FOSS and hacker spirit. This is true whether you like
or don't like what they write in a blog post.

------
azio
So, what did he learn exactly?

