I’ll admit that learning Bootstrap was a rollercoaster. The learning process had its ups and downs. Right when I thought I figured out how to do one thing like center a text, both vertically and horizontally, another problem would arise or my solution wouldn’t even work. However, after seeing different solutions from both Moore’s solution videos and my friends, I was able to get a better understanding of Bootstrap and frontend development.
I believe that having some frontend development skills is great to have especially if continue to become a software engineer. It was a pain for me to get a hang of but using Bootstrap had made the process of creating a whole website, at least the home page, a much easier experience. With Bootstrap 5, I was able to create more elements for a website in a short amount of time like a navbar, middle text or image, setting a background image, and footer. I was even able to create elements that I had never done before with just HTML and CSS like links, dropdown menus, and making your website more presentable.
You can get away with creating UI frameworks with just HTML and CSS but it will take a lot more time and effort if you have to add a bunch of elements and have certain elements be interactive. Bootstrap 5 is like a whole bunch of shortcuts when creating UI frameworks. Need some spacing on both sides of a text? Use a container. Need an Instagram logo? Search up the icon in Bootstrap and copy it into your code.
After doing some practice WODs and spending countless hours looking at all the different things Bootstrap is able to do, I was able to see a pattern. Most websites have the same layout, a navbar, something in the center, and a footer. This is when having my code from those practice WODs come in handy because since the code is so similar, I am able to reuse code. It cuts my worktime down by a great margin because I don’t need to type everything out from scratch. All I have to do is make a couple of tweaks here and there like the color of the navbar or add another column to my footer and I have a whole new website in just minutes!
I used this method of reusing code in my In-class WOD since they all had the same layout, navbar, center text or image, and footer. With Bootstrap and the practice WODs, I was able to complete the In-class WOD in Rx time. Some people may argue that you can just use HTML and CSS while still reusing previous code. But when it comes to adding padding, margin, adding a link, Bootstrap makes the process seemly and allows you to do all of that in one line in just one file instead of jumping back and forth between files.
Obviously, I am not a pro at Bootstrap but it has opened my eyes to what I am capable of when working with frontend development. Bootstrap gives me a bunch of operations and a bunch of customization at my fingertips. When creating bigger UI frameworks, Bootstrap will be able to give a helping hand and save me from more sleepless nights cutting my work time in half.