How I Learned Bootstrap (Part 2/2)

After doing the required reading on Twitter Bootstrap and getting a feel of how it was used, it didn't seem so damn hard. That was because Bootstrap is what a wheelchair is to a double amputee. You can't walk, but it will still get you from Point A to Point B by leveraging on a different set of tools, i.e, your hands. In the case of Bootstrap, the user does not have to understand Responsive Design - he just needs to leverage on HTML. The CSS files provided will do the rest.

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And then it was time to wade in further. Playtime was over.

Time to go deeper.

I accepted a commission from a friend to build a site. I charged him a shamefully low price for my services, but on one condition - I was to be allowed to use Twitter Bootstrap even though I had no professional experience in it. For months, I slaved over the look and feel. Money wasn't the issue here. I wanted to produce something using Bootstrap, something that would actually be put on public domain. With each UAT, each iteration, I grew stronger. Sure, I wasn't exactly becoming a guru in Responsive Design. But learning to use Twitter Bootstrap was a good first step.

And then I discovered something strange.

When I viewed the source of my HTML, it now looked suspiciously familiar. In fact, it was pretty much identical to what my colleague was doing. She had been using Bootstrap, and the clueless noob that was my CEO had bought into the narrative that this made her the expert in Responsive Design. Although at his level, I'm pretty sure it made no difference whatsoever. The end result was there.

Now, this is not meant to be a criticism of my ex-CEO. There's plenty to criticize, but that's neither here nor there. No, this is basically how the average layman thinks. They see the end result, but they're not privy to the process and they have no clue what differentiates a tool-user from a real expert. Resenting it would not make an iota of difference. Instead, I resolved to take full advantage of it.

How?

Performing "magic".

I quit my job. And then I left that company for another company full of the same clueless noobs, and presented my newfound skills in Bootstrap as mastery in Responsive Design. It worked like a charm. They had wanted Responsive Design, and what I gave them was a whole lot of shameless Bootstrapping. They never understood the difference.

Why did I quit the company?

That's the burning question. Some of my ex-colleagues, due to the timing of my departure coinciding with the promotion of my new colleague over me, thought I left out of bitterness. That's their opinion, but I think they were projecting a fair bit. I didn't care about the promotion. Being a "Senior" or a "Manager" has never mattered to me, especially when said title is being bestowed by some clueless jackass.

So why did I want to leave? After all, I'd already overcome my front-end handicap. There was no longer a need to leave, right?

Wrong.

You see, biases run deep. I had been hired by a Manager who had been on his way out. In fact, his last day was the day I joined. My new colleague had been hired by the CEO himself. When push came to shove, I knew whose side he would be on. It's just human nature.

Also, the sensation of coming in every morning to a workday filled with endless grunt work was... unpleasant. It wasn't the volume of work that I minded. It was the complexity, or lack thereof. Seriously, I was a web developer. Why would I want to spend another year coping with EDMs, writing registration forms and performing maintenance work that an intern could do? The money was good, but this was ultimately career suicide. I was a diesel truck doing the work of a horse cart.

On top of all that, was knowing that I was working for a guy who did not rate me, and was simply looking for an excuse to get rid of me. If not the front-end excuse, eventually some other thing. I could have tried harder to prove myself, but I simply did not see the need to prove myself to a dude who didn't know jackshit. What was the point?

Learning Bootstrap did not eliminate the need to leave. Rather, it facilitated my desire to leave.

The Takeaway

You may think this sounds utterly cynical, and on a certain level, it sure as hell is. But there's a lesson (or a few) to be learned in all this. Sometimes it makes no sense to beat them, when you can simply join them. The result of this was that I picked up a few new skills to add to my ever-growing toolbox.

The first, obviously, was Twitter Bootstrap.

The second, not so obviously, was that sometimes being an expert is too much work when you can just fool people into thinking you're an expert.

The third, if I do say so myself, is that I'm pretty good at turning lemons into lemonade.

I guess we could call this a... re-boot?
T___T