Go with the flow
I have always tried not to go with the flow. This is actually kinda funny, since one of my favorite songs when I was a teenager is “Go With the Flow” from the Queens of the Stone Age.
Anyway, I always tried to be different and not really follow the trend. I don’t really know why. To give some examples, while a lot of people were starting on Laravel in 2011 and 2012, I was really only looking at all the bad things the framework had to offer and listening to the haters of the new tech.
The same thing happened to Bootstrap. While people where learning it and building a lot of web sites (that maybe looked like the same) I was looking for alternatives. I built websites using Sapo and Bulma, but I refused trying out Bootstrap, because I only heard people talking about the bad parts of it…
What is the problem with that? Is it wrong to look for alternatives to the big names in our industry? Not really, it’s actually a good thing to know the alternatives and to consider the trade-offs. Because everything has trade-offs and if you believe something does not it’s because you did not find it yet.
I believe the problem is to actually choose to ignore the most famous ones. I can tell you I gained zero knowledge by ignoring the mainstream.
The mainstream is nice too. I mean, the more people involved in something, the better are the chances of having better support and even a better ecosystem. Look at the amount of tolling around Laravel, Bootstrap, Django and Ruby on Rails. It’s way easier to discuss these options with people both online and offline.
Anyway, it took me some time to realize I was loosing time by ignoring some of the mainstream options in our industry.
Happy hacking!
Evaldo Junior
Web developer, writer, speaker, Free and Open Source Software contributor and sometimes a gamer and a guitar and ukulele player.