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.
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 !! :)
great response. i see what you're getting at from this and other peoples' replies - that the most important thing you learned was that doing hoodrat stuff with your friends is awesome. The only reason i posted this was because it read to me like this was the only thing you learned rather than the most important thing.
i really like what you've written here though, makes it a lot more clear. have you considered adding some pieces of this comment to the article?
Personally I think you've made one of the most invaluable contributions to web development, and your article is very sincere and genuine, well done on taking the time to put together such a great project.
While other framework's exist, bootstrap is packaged fantastically well, and provides excellent documentation
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.
I respect your honesty sharing what you really think, but I didn't read it this way, I read it as: "We spent so much time in it, and what I learned from it is how great it is to have friends do cool things together, and this is what keeps us going more than learning more CSS or JavaScript"
I think that's not cocky, and quite true. e.g. the reason they still do it, is because they enjoy the teamwork and community support, and that's the "lesson he learned" which is answering the question in the title of the post.
And besides, being the #1 project on GH and being used by any other startup out there gives him all the rights to be cocky if he wants to.
They are both deserving a BDFL title which gives you automatic immunity from being called cocky. Even if they are.
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.