[opendais]

Actually, to me it screams MVP by a backend focused developer. It signals the exact opposite to me as long as it is a company of only 1-2 people. They know what they are doing but have no design chops...which is much better than the reverse.

[andybak]

Or "they invested time in their product rather choosing to reinvent the wheel on their marketing website".

Sounds like a pretty positive indicator to me.

[vezzy-fnord]

I don't like it when people invoke "don't reinvent the wheel". Yes, if you're reimplementing standard library functionality, then you could talk about reinventing the wheel.

But a lot of the time it really means "Let frameworks do everything for you." Don't reinvent the wheel, but feel free to reimplement subsets of the wheel that aren't all too tailored to your purpose. In fact, if you're a programmer, you probably do that all the time.

Particularly when it comes to web design, there is no specific "wheel" to speak of. I'm all for using Bootstrap... as a framework, not as a template you copy and paste.

I can make exceptions for local web applications (like router interface panels) and small, one-trick apps, though.

[andybak]

> Let frameworks do everything for you

I'm happy to let a framework do everything for me - assuming the 'everything' you speak of is done well.

Implicit in your statement is an assumption that this will be bad - I'm not disagreeing that there are downsides, but please don't hide these inside implied reasons. Bring them out and let's debate them explicitly.

[alttab]

Letting frameworks do everything for you usually means you're not doing anything interesting.

For many products however, these days an "interesting" interface doesn't sell it unless you are pinterest or something. 99% of the time, users are at your page/app for some level of function. Rarely is the function essentially the form.

[opendais]

Also a valid interpretation. :)