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Discussion on: Alternative to Bootstrap??? 🤔

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Patrick Charles-Lundaahl

I would recommend you worry less about what's trendy, and pay more attention to the specific problems you are trying to solve.

When Bootstrap was first released, it solved a few key problems. Off the top of my head, I believe the main ones are probably:

  1. Grid-based layouts
  2. Easy-to-use modals/sticky widgets
  3. A pre-built component library

These days, with flexbox, css grid, and position sticky, problems 1 and 2 are largely solved using plain CSS. So, if those are the main things you're concerned with, I'd suggest just using straight CSS. Alternatively, if you're after a pre-built component library (and you like what Bootstrap has to offer), then by all means use it!

Tailwind, SCSS/LESS, and other CSS tools all solve a slightly different set of problems, or solve them in different ways. I think that, rather than asking what's trendy, it would be more valuable to spend some time with a few of them to figure out what those problems are, and if you like the way they solve them (and the costs that come with them).

As an aside, if you're focusing on front-end, you honestly can't go wrong with time spent learning vanilla CSS. You might not use it all the time in your day-to-day job, but understanding how the cascade works or how to create animations without resorting to JS are really useful skills.