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General Discussion

Am I crazy for not fully using frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation?

when I first started coding I saw Bootstrap and Foundation as the answer to everything.. but now that I've got to a certain level I hate using them! my question is Am I crazy for not fully using frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation?

what I mean is I just use bootstrap for the grid system but I dont want to use anything else out of it because I feel I don't learn how to do anything by myself. I'm always looking online for what design firms are looking for and now I wonder if me not using bootstrap in my designs will that hurt my chances? specially if they put frameworks in their requirements...

anyone else in the same dilema?

3 Answers

Jon Ryan
Jon Ryan
22,088 Points

Honestly, I think it goes both ways. It depends on the project and or agency. I personally use bootstrap on a majority of projects on the side. On the other hand, I just interviewed with a company yesterday called The Nerdery, and they do not use frameworks like bootstrap or foundation. I believe frameworks should be used as a tool, but its imperative that you understand how to write your own code and create projects from scratch as well.

I'm building my first website from scratch using plain HTML, CSS, and PHP. As someone who just recently heard of such frameworks, I think they would have saved me loads of time in dealing with a lot of issues, namely spacing and columns. But I'm glad I didn't use them because I want to struggle through these problems and figure them out for myself, with occasional help from the forums when I get really stuck and need to be pointed in the right direction. Maybe in the future, I'll use frameworks because I'll have "gotten the idea" by then of what goes into building sites and why this and that's important, but I can definitely see from your perspective. If you have a lot of experience and have reached a certain level, just take what you need from the frameworks and nothing more - I can only imagine using them for convenience myself.

All depends on what your looking to build. I wouldn't use a CSS framework for a static site. However, if you are building a larger project that will have more pages added in the future a framework is the way to go. I just started using sass and would recommend Bourbon Neat for smaller projects. Larger projects with more complexion I tend to use just the grid portion of Foundation.