[atacrawl]

Ugh, I'm getting real tired of these snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism. Many job posts call for familiarity with Twitter Bootstrap, so is it proper to call out the applicants (or "kiddies," as the author derides) for responding in kind? It's bogus. And trashing applicants for internships is a bridge too far.

(minor edits)

[if_by_whisky]

As an applicant, you'd be stupid not to target your resume with buzzwords based on trends you see in job descriptions. You are trying to get past the recruiter, who is literally going to crosscheck buzzwords on your application with those in the description.

To call applicants kiddies for playing that game the way it's supposed to be played... well, it's just seems naive.

[bradleyland]

Except that "Twitter Bootstrap" isn't a buzzword at all; it's a collection of CSS, Javascripts, and HTML coding conventions that make it possible to quickly build websites.

We put things in our job listing like, "familiarity with Backbone required". Is Backbone a buzzword? Is someone who uses Backbone less of a developer? Should I just automatically assume that anyone with developer after their name knows Backbone? Will this list of dumb, rhetorical questions ever end?

The author of this post gets it completely wrong:

"Claiming Bootstrap as evidence that you 'know' development is like claiming that changing your oil means you 'know' automotive engineering."

Knowing Bootstrap does count as knowing development, whether Paul likes it or not. There's quite a bit to Bootstrap, and even if it only takes someone a couple of days to come up to speed with it, maybe I don't want to pay for those couple of days. Maybe I don't have a couple of days.

Knowlege is a continuum. Once you gain a little, it's easy to look at everyone beneath you with a sense of contempt, but what's the point? What do you gain? Better yet, what are you giving back to the world? If we accept the author's message in whole, what action can we take to better ourselves? Sorry, but I can't see any dramatic improvement if we all stop asking about Twitter Bootstrap tomorrow.

Atacrawl nailed it when he called this a, "snotty drive-bys masquerading as insightful criticism".

[if_by_whisky]

I think to a recruiter, bootstrap, backbone, c++, CAD, flask, etc... Are all just words to match up. That's all I meant when I called it a buzzword.

[Bahamut]

Agreed - I see many job listings these days that mention knowledge of Twitter Bootstrap...you'd be stupid as an applicant not to mention being familiar with it given its pervasiveness. It helps you get by the HR filter, where the resume is what matters, which might mean littering it with terms that would otherwise be banal to the typical good developer.