I’m starting to think that I feel the same way about CSS Frameworks as I did about MVC frameworks. There is a love/hate relationship with a bit of pride mixed in.
I love the fact that Bootstrap and Foundation give me a base to work off of. I can grab what I want from the framework and override the things I don’t like.
I don’t like the fact that the syntax is often bloated and ugly. I also don’t like the fact that I can write the CSS myself. I have been doing it for years.
This inner struggle is nothing new. I did the same thing in my PHP days when I first started to encounter MVC frameworks. The frameworks seemed logical to me, but I felt that I didn’t need them. I had been building sites without them for a while and that was just how I worked. However stupid it was, I built the sites from the ground up everytime. Sure I had little snippets of code I had saved, but for the most part I built it by hand everytime.
A part of me felt that these frameworks were simply a crutch and any respectable programmer wouldn’t think of using something when he could just program it himself. Another part of me feared that if I used these tools I would forget how to program these things.
The truth is that it’s progress. Eliminating the need to write the same code over and over is a step forward. By using OSS, I allow myself to worry about bigger problems. I think I’ve grown by not worrying about wiring up forms or writing raw SQL, even though I can.
I think it’s still important to know these things, but less important to worry about writing the same things over and over.
Aw crap, I think I’ve just convinced myself that I would be crazy not to use a CSS Framework. It is progress and if I miss writing CSS, I could use that time to work on more advanced CSS.
Progress is a good thing.