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Pachi πŸ₯‘
Pachi πŸ₯‘

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Learning Bootstrap in 2020. Is it worth it?

I am a babe front-end dev.
While I get along with pure CSS, I often see in Job ads Bootstrap as a requirement.
So I was wondering if it is worth to go and learn bootstrap.
Give me the PROs and CONs

p.s. While learning a new thing is always worth, I have limited time

Top comments (6)

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aroseman profile image
Andrew Roseman

Bootstrap does not require a lot of "learning" persay. Basically it writes the css for you and you just apply the appropriate classes to the elements you want the bootstrap style/js to be applied to.

If you want those jobs you should play around with it so you understand how to include it in your projects and get a feel for which classes and objects would serve as solutions for certain feature requests or design problems, but quick googling can easily get you where you need so I'd probably still apply as it doesn't change anything about the fundamentals it just does stuff for you.

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scrabill profile image
Shannon Crabill

I agree, "learn" enough to able to hit the ground running with it and you should be fine.

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jameesy profile image
Jamees Bedford • Edited

I would say just familiarise yourself with it.. whilst it is becoming more obsolete, old code bases will likely use it and it takes max an hour of familiarising yourself with the concepts by reading through the documentation. It’s not a huge time sink.

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trippymonk profile image
Blake Stansell

I don't know a great deal of it, but the documentation is easy enough to follow that you can build a pretty simple web-page without too much trouble. It's mostly just adding the correct class names to your HTML elements.

I'm learning like you, and I didn't want to get too much into Bootstrap because I don't know JQuery. I did read somewhere that the next iteration, Bootstrap 5, is supposed to do away with JQuery. That would certainly help newer programmers learn it at a more in-depth level.

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giorgosk profile image
Giorgos Kontopoulos πŸ‘€ • Edited

@pachicodes bootstrap as probably already mentioned starts losing ground because css/css3 has improved over the years and does most of the things that were difficult and people had learned to rely on bootstrap for.

So if you know enough css/css3 you really don't need to learn it, but perhaps testing it before a job interview or just to understand some of the decisions made will not hurt either.

To be fair there will always be a need to use bootstrap or any other opinionated css framework to style something fast for a quick demo or an MVP but I would not choose it for a client's work in year 2020 because bootstrap based website you need to go to extra lengths to make them look unique and "non-bootstrappy".

Just my 2c

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abhinavmir profile image
abhinav the builder

I wouldn't suggest it if you already are familiar with CSS as such. Focus on Frontend frameworks like React/Vue and I personally use lighter CSS frameworks like Materialize.