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Ask HN: Why Is Bootstrap So Wide-Spread?

8 points by psion ↗ HN
As a backend web developer, I'm not very good with design and styling. With that, I tend to lean on templates for projects. The big thing I have noticed, and tend to get annoyed by, is there are so many Bootstrap templates. Even when I pay for a template, Bootstrap. I tried to hire a freelancer once, and I had to go pretty deep in the bids to find someone who didn't use Bootstrap. Nothing wrong with it, I just know that there are other CSS and frontend systems that are simpler to manage than Bootstrap. So why is there so much of this out there?

10 comments

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jimrhods23
Because it's really easy to use and well supported. I've used it in many projects without too many issues.
duiker101
Because bootstrap was the first one to fill the "market" and it became widespread and the golden standard. Many people once they learnt that could probably work more efficiently. More bootstrap = less work on a template = more templates = more money. They probably don't feel compelled to learn something new and chances are that there is also a huge demand for bootstrap templates for similar reasons.
codegeek
First one to gain market share as a full CSS framework. At the time when bootstrap was released by twitter team, there was nothing like it. It gained fast adoption by people who cannot write raw css easily and was the first one to provide mobile responsiveness out of the box.
twoquestions
If I might ask, why do you not like Bootstrap for your template? Is it the jQuery dependency, or the enforced similarity to other designs?
halfbrown
You know how when you buy a car, you start to see it everywhere? This sounds similar, and I feel ya. Yes, there are plenty of Bootstrap themes out there, but there are also lots for Foundation and any of the other frameworks out there. Some good, some bad. But Bootstrap does indeed have the Lion's Share of searches, it seems.

Like some of the other folks above mentioned, Bootstrap really was one of the first to gain in popularity (thanks, Twitter) and to that end it's no wonder. For the most part it's fairly simple to get started with, there's plenty of pretty decent documentation, and a bajillion examples to gain inspiration (or insight) from.

Personally, I like it. It's not perfect and can be bloaty (that's a technical term, naturally) but in many/most cases it works just fine if you've had some experience with it and know how to tweak things.

Avalaxy
I just finally switched one of our projects from a very crappy framework called Metro UI to Bootstrap. The reasons were that the other framework was very poorly coded, supported almost nothing out of the box and also looked pretty bad in a lot of scenarios. Compared to that, Bootstrap works incredibly well, is very well-maintained, supports almost every scenario you can think of (if it isn't supported out of the box, you can find some plugin for it) and adheres to the latest web standards. On top, it's very easy to make something look good with Bootstrap (it will never look GREAT, but solid at least).
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cimmanom
Ecosystem. It’s easy to find people who already know it to hire. It’s easy to find modules and libraries for any sort of widget you might want to use. It’s easy to find people who know it well to help you learn or troubleshoot it.
justlearncom
Many front-end developers prefer to complete work quickly. Bootstrap makes the process much faster and you don't want to read old CSS codes. I have developed a website without Bootstrap since the website will perform better. https://www.justlearn.com - We write custom CSS, but it takes more time to add new pages.