Bootstrap vs Spring Boot

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Bootstrap vs Spring-Boot: What are the differences?

In web development, two popular frameworks that are commonly used are Bootstrap and Spring Boot. Bootstrap focuses on front-end design with pre-built components, while Spring Boot streamlines Java back-end development with features for rapid deployment and management. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Architecture and Purpose: Bootstrap is a front-end framework for designing and building responsive websites. It focuses on providing pre-built CSS and JavaScript components, as well as an intuitive grid system for creating responsive layouts. On the other hand, Spring Boot is a back-end framework for developing Java-based web applications. It aims to simplify the process of building and deploying enterprise-grade Spring-powered applications.

  2. Technology Stack: Bootstrap is primarily based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It provides a wide range of pre-designed components and styles that can be easily customized to suit the needs of the website. Spring Boot, on the other hand, is based on the Java programming language and the Spring framework. It leverages various Spring modules and features to provide a robust and scalable web application development framework.

  3. Ease of Use: Bootstrap is known for its ease of use and simplicity. It provides a set of predefined classes and styles that can be easily utilized to create consistent and visually appealing web designs. It requires minimal coding and allows developers to quickly prototype and build websites. On the contrary, Spring Boot has a steeper learning curve and requires a good understanding of Java and the Spring framework. It provides more flexibility and control over the application development process but may require more configuration and coding.

  4. Flexibility and Customization: Bootstrap offers a high level of flexibility and customization options. It provides a wide range of customizable CSS classes, responsive utilities, and JavaScript plugins that can be tailored to fit specific design requirements. Spring Boot, on the other hand, offers flexibility in terms of application architecture and configuration. It allows developers to customize various aspects of the application, such as database connections, security, and logging, based on their specific needs.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: Bootstrap has a large and vibrant community with extensive documentation, resources, and a wide selection of third-party themes and templates. It is widely adopted and supported by developers worldwide. Spring Boot also has a strong community support with a vast ecosystem of libraries, plugins, and integrations. It benefits from the broader Spring community, which provides a wealth of resources, tutorials, and best practices.

  6. Primary Use Case: Bootstrap is primarily used for developing the user interface (UI) and front-end design of a website. It is suitable for creating visually appealing, responsive, and mobile-friendly websites. Spring Boot, on the other hand, is used for developing the back-end logic and business logic of web applications. It is suitable for building scalable, enterprise-grade applications with complex business workflows and integrations.

In summary, Bootstrap is a front-end framework focused on providing pre-built CSS and JavaScript components for website design, while Spring Boot is a back-end framework for developing Java-based web applications. Bootstrap offers simplicity, ease of use, and a wide range of customizable components, while Spring Boot provides flexibility, scalability, and extensive community support.

Advice on Bootstrap and Spring Boot

Is learning Spring and Spring Boot for web apps back-end development is still relevant in 2021? Feel free to share your views with comparison to Django/Node.js/ ExpressJS or other frameworks.

Please share some good beginner resources to start learning about spring/spring boot framework to build the web apps.

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Replies (1)

Java in general, in my opinion, is somewhat outdated in 2021. C# is a better language, and therefore, I think ASP.NET (Core/.NET 5) should be used over it. Node.js isn't bad if you are getting started, or if you need to prototype an app. I use Node in production because of TypeScript, but .NET is a really good framework that has excellent performance.

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Ashish Sharma
Sr. UI Associate at Daffodil Software · | 5 upvotes · 679.3K views

I am a bit confused when to choose Bootstrap vs Material Design or Tailwind CSS, and why? I mean, in which kind of projects we can work with bootstrap/Material/Tailwind CSS? If the design is made up on the grid, we prefer bootstrap, and if flat design, then material design. Similarly, when do we choose tailwind CSS?

Any suggestion would be appreciated?

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Replies (4)

Hi Ashish,

If you need minimal work to be done from your end and like most of the components / design available out of the box - go with Bootstrap. This is the oldest and has the widest adoption and a whole range of components built out by others.

If you like Material design, this is a good choice too. Please note that Bootstrap also has a Material theme, though it is not as native.

Both of these above frameworks are bulky and has more than what you may need.

If you like to build micro-components in a elegant way, TailwindCSS is the way to go.

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I don't know about material design.

You would go with Bootstrap if you want to prototype / build something without bothering about the design at all and you are OK if everything looks kinda template-y, using bootstrap out of the box components.

Go with Tailwind if you need a sleek design, a user interface where building with components will be important (because tailwind strongly favors component-based UI), and you know you will need to extend the built-in classes with your own (because tailwind is very easy to extend)

I would personally recommend tailwind over bootstrap any day of the week.

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Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Tailwind is great you don't have to mess with naming things and it is so much more flexible than the cookie cutter bootstrap, but I don't know about material UI. I recommend tailwind it's super simple to learn and has great code snippets.

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Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Put simply, you should use Tailwind regardless. It is a great addition to whatever you use because it removes the hassle of writing CSS.

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Rafsanjanee Rizvi
Owner at Mingchen Information And Technology · | 4 upvotes · 378.2K views
Needs advice
on
ExpressJSExpressJSNestJSNestJS
and
Spring BootSpring Boot

Hi, I am a new developer using Ionic to develop a mobile app. I have recently tried to build a social mobile app which will have video calling, payment transaction, chatting, sharing, etc. I am now confused as to which framework I should use for the backend: Spring Boot or ExpressJS or NestJS? Any detailed advice will be better for my development. Looking forward to your valuable reply.

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Replies (2)

Any tools that achieve your software functionalities is good. you should check if with these frameworks you can do video-call, chat etc. how the scalability is achieved and the complexity of using it with them. since you are starting from scratch you can do this kind of feasibility before starting

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Recommends

If I want to write server api, I will use NestJS as primary framework. It base on express | fastify so I can use anything of expressJs. SpringBoot is a java framework. I will think to write as payment transaction service. If you are Ionic developer. you will know Js / ES6. You can try NestJS / ExpressJS. - video calling: You can not create video calling feature. Some keywords: ffmpeg / coturn / webrtc - chatting: realtime (socket.io / websocket) - you can try some opensource as rocketchat. It also have video calling feature.

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Hi

I’ve been using Django for the last year on and off to do my backend API. I’m getting a bit frustrated with the Django REST framework with the setup of the serializers and Django for the lack of web sockets. I’m considering either Spring or .NET Core. I’m familiar with Kotlin and C# but I’ve not built any substantial projects with them. I like OOP, building a desktop app, web API, and also the potential to get a job in the future or building a tool at work to manage my documents, dashboard and processes point cloud data.

I’m familiar with c/cpp, TypeScript.

I would love your insights on where I should go.

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
.NET Core.NET Core

Theres a logt going on in the dotnet world. I currently do all my Rest APIs with asp.net core.

The Setup is very easy as the .net web sdk provides with a lot features you don't want to keep yourself concerned with. You can integrate Swagger with little effort.

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Dzung Nguyen
Researcher at Florida Institute of Technology · | 6 upvotes · 370.1K views
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

Spring Boot is the lightweight of the Spring framework. I used the Spring framework before, and I fall in love with the Spring Boot. I also use .NET core, but still, I like Spring boot the best. If you have time then you should experience both. You are more than halfway in gaining experience. My suggestion is always to try to learn many things as you can.

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Nikhil Gurnani
Sr. Backend Engineer at Grappus · | 4 upvotes · 364.9K views
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

I see what you're going through and I extend my hands to you. I felt the same frustration after almost 1.5 years of working with Django and Node.js in the parallel. And since the last one year, I've transitioned into Spring Boot. I think its fair to say, that its quite different when you're going from Django background as a framework, but otherwise. I think it's one of the robust ones out there. Scalability is seamless and you get most of the things out of the box or easily supported by dev dependencies. You should definitely check it out! :)

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Eva Maciejko
Needs advice
on
ExpressJSExpressJSLaravelLaravel
and
Spring BootSpring Boot

Hello, I am a fullstack web developer. I have been working for a company with Java/ Spring Boot and client-side JavaScript(mainly jQuery, some AngularJS) for the past 4 years. As I wish to now work as a freelancer, I am faced with a dilemma: which stack to choose given my current knowledge and the state of the market?

I've heard PHP is very popular in the freelance world. I don't know PHP. However, I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to learn since it has many similarities with Java (OOP). It seems to me that Laravel has similarities with Spring Boot (it's MVC and OOP). Also, people say Laravel works well with Vue.js, which is my favorite JS framework.

On the other hand, I already know the Javascript language, and I like Vue.js, so I figure I could go the fullstack Javascript route with ExpressJS. However, I am not sure if these techs are ripe for freelancing (with regards to RAD, stability, reliability, security, costs, etc.) Is it true that Express is almost always used with MongoDB? Because my experience is mostly with SQL databases.

The projects I would like to work on are custom web applications/websites for small businesses. I have developed custom ERPs before and found that Java was a good fit, except for it taking a long time to develop. I cannot make a choice, and I am constantly switching between trying PHP and Node.js/Express. Any real-world advice would be welcome! I would love to find a stack that I enjoy while doing meaningful freelance coding.

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Replies (10)
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

Hi Eva, As you have solid experience with Spring already, you should jump into freelancing with that. It would be quite stressful to start freelancing with a tech stack you don't know well. Then in the background you can keep learning/practicing an alternative and switch over when you are confident enough (eg. 0.5-1 year later). I think you should learn Laravel as you already like it and find it easier. Express has better performance but that is not required for most of the small freelancer projects.

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Benoît Hubert
JavaScript Instructor at Wild Code School · | 6 upvotes · 676.4K views
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

I think Patrik and Alex are right: if you're comfortable with Spring Boot already, you'll be more productive right from the start.

If you wish to learn something else besides, both Laravel and Express are good choices. They aren't in the same category of frameworks: Laravel is an all-in-one solution, while Express is more like "build your own stack from different parts". Which implies that you can use whatever you want as a database engine: MySQL or PostgreSQL are perfectly valid choices (in my school, we teach Express with MySQL, because SQL is still a big thing here in France, and a sought-after skill). You can use Sequelize or TypeORM which support all major SQL DBMS.

Express is widely used, but if you're seeking the JavaScript equivalent of Spring Boot or Laravel, you probably want to look at NestJS. The only potential downside is that it's still young, maintained by a small commmunity, compared to those behind Spring Boot and Laravel.

Bottom line: using a stack tech, that you enjoy and are comfortable with, matters. Spring Boot + Vue.js seem perfectly fine to me. But do forget jQuery if you're using Vue.js, React or Angular, because it will definitely bring more harm than good!

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Recommends
on
ExpressJSExpressJS

Looking at current technological trends and rise of JavaScript, you cannot go wrong with JavaScript. - There's an abundance of libraries to get most things done - You can use JavaScript for both the frontend and the backend - this allows you potentially share your logic/models/code across both stacks - A dynamic/interpreted language such as JavaScript is great for serverless (there's somewhat of a trend towards serverless aswell - especially in modern projects) - If you like/need static typing, you can always migrate seemlessly to Typescript - VueJS is a lightweight framework (compared to Angular), it has more GitHub stars and most would argue it's easier to work with (beginner friendly). Additionally most modern webapps do not use JQuery anymore (even though a lot of legacy projects continue to do so). You don't need JQuery if you use Vue/Angular/React

Additionally it doesn't seem like performance is a hugely important metric in your scenario, so JavaScript would suffice.

Note: These are all my opinions and what I've seen in the current market when recently searching for jobs.

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Muhammad Waleed
The Community Management · | 5 upvotes · 685K views
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

I would definitely recommend you to go with Spring Boot + AngularJS + jQuery. Reasons: 1- You have an experience of 4 years with the above-mentioned stack. 2- As you mentioned that you wish to work as a freelancer, your stack is the perfect one for finding good bids with a little less effort than that of PHP + Laravel + Vue.js.

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Hi as someone who employs and select developers i agree with a lot almost sayed but think of what are your strengths and where you are or better where your customers are. If you search for big enterprise projects spring boot is ok sql is must and html css as well. if you want to go more to internet related companies (like airbnb, what sup, facebook ) or similar (and not asia) then react is a must node js as well. The libraries tools etc which are used you need to adopt fast. If asia then VUE is a must. but if you like small projects with individuals or like wordpress or similar then you can learn php but i think in 2020 it is wasted time. Same for python in that area. and i also see that we often have problem that developer at least must understand docker docker compose better as it works with kubernetes ,.. just my 5 cents

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Rubin Thomas
Software Cloud Developer at RUBIN THOMAS · | 4 upvotes · 615.8K views
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on
PerlPerlPHPPHPPythonPython

As a developer myself, I would recommend you not to restrict yourself to JAVA, PHP or any other language. New Tools/languages keep coming every day. If you do plan to move to freelancing. PHP has a lot of options in the freelance space and a lot of competition too.

Learning PHP is as simple as learning any other language. It depends merely on your interest.

Personally if you can code, you should not restrict yourself. I have had to code in many languages, PHP, Perl, shell script, Python, Java, Javascript, Ruby etc... I would keep your developing skills and logic, algorithms etc.. and increase your knowledge and experience in the different languages.

I agree with you JAVA is a lot more time consuming. But it also has its enterprise level scope.

At the same time learning a new language should not be a barrier for you to stop exploring what's out there and keeping your skills up to date. Learning new technologies should be your primary focus and getting project out of your stack helps you build a good reputation.

There are many options for you to pursue. Having an open mindset will help you move forward. If you look to learn now, you are setting yourself up for a brighter future.

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Alex Spieslechner
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

in order to stay employable, I'd work with something you can deliver with. if I'd be your client and you'd have to get comfortable with a new stack, I would 100% not pay you for this startup time. learn new stuff in your free-time. or set aside time for learning.

that said, if you want to reorientate, php (even though i personally hate it) is extremely wide spread. but so are java and nodejs. so I'm not a fan of that argument... i recommend building something in each language, and see what you enjoy more. for me it was nodejs, because I already enjoy frontend JavaScript, and appreciate the ecosystem and community.

regarding expressjs and mongodb: yes, it is a goto solution for a lot of tutorials, because its as simple as it gets. especially wben using something like monk. BUT if you want to use mysql, posgres or similar, check out TypeORM, Prism or another ORM-like solution. you can use any db with express, and there's plenty of abstraction layers, which make your life easier. but i noticed that expressjs does a lot less "holding hands" compared to .net core (c#), or laravel (php). can be a pro or a con.

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Recommends
on
ExpressJSExpressJSLaravelLaravel

I like fullstack freelancers who stacks are clean as one of below

  1. PHP (laravel ) + Jquery + Bootstrap

  2. Python(Django) + Angular JS or VueJS

  3. NODEJS + REACTJS

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Recommends
on
ExpressJSExpressJS

Hey There, I would recommend going fullstack javascript since you already have experience with javascript on the front end it would be very easy to pickup node and express js. You can use sql with node and express if you please, but mongo is pretty easy to get going with.

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Ahmed Gamal

Please, try to work with your comfortable stack, here is some recommendation

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Needs advice
on
BootstrapBootstrap
and
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

I am planning to redesign my entire application, which is currently in Bootstrap. I heard about Tailwind CSS, and I think its really cool to work with. Is it okay if I use Bootstrap and Tailwind together? I can't remove Bootstrap altogether, as my application is using the js dependencies of Bootstrap, which I don't want to disturb.

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Replies (3)
Ivo Pereira

Factually talking about systems, we gotta make two bold headlines about each one: Bootstrap has been around for a while, has a vast community and much probably will not be gone in a while. Tailwind in the other hand, is the trendy framework starting from the past year. Referring to UI, I really prefer Tailwind, however I can't ignore the fact that a lot of libraries that emerged felt short in the end after a few years (a point where Bootstrap kept his status).

You are able to use both them together but I advise you — it will be a mess. And you gotta hope that you won't have any kind of conflicts between class naming and other general styling.

My recommendation would be to use one and only one. Perhaps rebuild the UI with a specific framework in mind, otherwise you will start to workaround things of both frameworks to contradict each other - and your team (if you work with one) will hate you.

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Arslan Ameer
Sr. Software Engineer at Forenax Technologies · | 5 upvotes · 592.5K views
Recommends
on
BootstrapBootstrap

You might have heard about bootstrap 5. Bootstrap is now totally jQuery free. i have tried foundation and bulma too. but eventually fall again for bootstrap, as it is most convenient and stable. i use bootstrap with less or sass.

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Barry Hylton
Recommends
on
BootstrapBootstrap

I use both of these regularly. If you're going to have to use Bootstrap due to your js dependencies, stick with Bootstrap. I actually prefer Tailwind, but trying to use both of them and make them "play nice" feels like making things more complex with no real benefit.

EDIT: Sorry for the late response, I just noticed how old this is. StackShare sent me this in an email for some reason so I assumed it was relatively fresh.

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Slimane Deb
Needs advice
on
NestJSNestJS
and
Spring BootSpring Boot
in

I am currently planning to build a project from scratch. I will be using Angular as front-end framework, but for the back-end I am not sure which framework to use between Spring Boot and NestJS. I have worked with Spring Boot before, but my new project contains a lot of I/O operations, in fact it will show a daily report. I thought about the new Spring Web Reactive Framework but given the idea that Node.js is the most popular on handling non blocking I/O I am planning to start learning NestJS since it is based on Angular philosophy and TypeScript which I am familiar with. Looking forward to hear from you dear Community.

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Replies (2)
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

NestJS is an excellent framework (they both are). I would say the fact that you're working with Angular makes NestJS a great match, unless you're splitting front and back end between developers. But even in that case I would still go with NestJS for a new project.

Regarding the single threading point, take a look at PM2 which helps to run Node in multiple processes (we use it with NestJS) https://pm2.keymetrics.io/docs/usage/cluster-mode/

Also regarding web server performance in general this is an interesting post showing how Node with outperform Java in a web situation (be careful though, best to check a few posts to make sure these aren't totally biased benchmarks!): https://www.tandemseven.com/blog/performance-java-vs-node/

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Recommends
on
KotlinKotlin

Node.js has only 1 real thread per process; Java JIT will mostly run faster than JS one; So if it happens to be not only I/O... Why do you need most popular, not simply popular? Does Node.js have tech advantages?

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Taimoor Mirza
Associate Software Engineer at Intech Process Automation · | 5 upvotes · 733.6K views
Needs advice
on
ASP.NET CoreASP.NET Core
and
Spring BootSpring Boot

For context, I currently use JavaScript (React) and Python (Flask) in my daily routine.

I need your help in choosing either Spring Boot or ASP.NET Core. Both frameworks seem to have mature ecosystems. I would like to hear your thoughts on the following points:

  • Difficulty level of both frameworks
  • Level of community support
  • Career prospects i.e do Spring based jobs pay more or vice versa
  • which one will be helpful if I decide to transition towards a more specialized field like data engineering.

I am asking this because it is something that I am also exploring in parallel. I know that Python and #SQL play a huge role in big data.

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Replies (4)
Keegan Witt
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

I'll preface this by saying I haven't ever done work on the Microsoft stack, so take this with a grain of salt.

Community support: Java tends to have a more active community (and much more diverse universe of new open source projects) than .Net (related to below).

Difficulty level: I'd say the Java/Spring stack is more difficult because Java developers tend to use more community projects and have to know which ones to choose in which circumstances (e.g. what logging framework to use? What database connection pooling library to use? What testing framework to use). That being said, most decisions you have to make have choices that are vastly more popular than others. My impression is that .NET guys use stuff from the standard library almost exclusively. If it's not provided there, it's a problem they never thought to solve or maybe write their own (usually the former).

Career prospects: I'll get hate for this probably, but Java/Spring has more jobs than .Net. .NET Core even more so because it's new. Most .NET jobs out there are going to be not Core, and not on anything other than Windows. LinkedIn search for jobs in United States shows 97,103 for Java and 36,448 for C#. That's not to say some individual city might not have more .NET than Java, but by and large Java is bigger. Also, .NET is not dying at the same pace as say Ruby on Rails (sorry Rails fans). I'd say it's ticking very slowly lower, maybe even holding steady. I wouldn't say you're screwed career-wise if you choose .NET. C# is also pretty similar to Java from what I've seen, and I know professionals that have transitioned to Java (though interestingly, I don't know any that did the reverse). Several companies have basically no .NET footprint, for example, Amazon, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all have Java, but basically no C#.

Specialized fields: Neither Spring or .Net are going to be a thing in a field like data science. That's exclusively Python (some R) for the most part. The only exception being that there is some Java in Hadoop, and Scala in Spark (which runs on the JVM). But I think those are generally more for data products being created, and not data science work. I'm also under the impression this is increasingly less the case than historically. Some other specialties might make Java useful, for example Android development.

In short, Java is the COBOL of the modern enterprise (which is both a good and bad thing). I recommend it to anyone over .NET, but not for technical reasons. It's for reasons related to the questions you asked. There are actually reasons I think CLR and C# are actually better from a technical perspective than Java (unsurprisingly, since they had the benefit of hindsight). But that's not what you were asking about...

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Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

Spring boot helps you creating microservices in hours, not days and there is a very active community around it with amazing integrations. Check one of the tutorials maybe. At least here in Germany, the job market will be better for Spring Boot as well, there are a lot more companies using Java then C#.

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Alexandru Muntean
Java Application Architect at IBM · | 4 upvotes · 542.7K views
Recommends
on
Spring BootSpring Boot

ASP.NET Core is pretty new while spring boot is very old but with a different name. Spring boot is just a pack of spring packages which make your life easier. I also believe that java community is way stronger than c# community... You can do your job in both frameworks and it's up to you what you choose after-all you're going to work on the project/lead it ... but whatever you choose.. after a few days of investment stick with your decision because in both frameworks you'll encounter challenges :)

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Klaus Nji
Staff Software Engineer at SailPoint Technologies · | 3 upvotes · 530.4K views

I’ll echo what others have said here with a few twists.

I have experience with both platforms including Micronaut, a relatively new kid on the block. It all depends on your near term goal. If it is to make money, sure Java jobs pay more generally because there is more hassles when dealing with the entire ecosystem. Like someone said earlier, you have to make a decision at almost every stage of the development cycle from the IDE, dependency resolution framework, logging, serialization, microservice framework etc. There is just too much choice which some may argue is an advantage while others may argue is a distraction and productivity killer. At the end of the day you can build solid systems with both frameworks.

Coming to ASP Core, yes I also agree that options are more streamlined. You’ll be using Visual Studio or Visual Studio code. For dependency management, you’ll be using Nuget. But I disagree with one of the comments above about the lack of choice. In some aspects .NET actually has more choice believe it or not for example choice of ORM. There is entity framework, nhibernate, dapper etc. For J2ee, hibernate reigns supreme although you have JPA. For dependency injection you have many IoC containers like unity, castle Windsor in .NET while you have Guice and maybe a Spring based implementation.

Also C# is technically a better language that Java. That’s not questionable as has also been stated above. Many things are done right obviously by avoiding some of the mistakes made in the underlying architecture surrounding the Java programming language. That’s why Microsoft created c# to begin with. The language is a lot cleaner and allows you to focus on learning core principles and nail down fundamental OO with emphasis on good design. I find too many distractions in the Java ecosystem which takes me away from understanding the core problem I am trying to solve.

So as you can this is not an easy decision and as someone has stated there’s work to do regardless of what technology choice you make.

If your sole purpose is to make a higher base salary, sure pick Spring Boot. If you want to quickly deliver something and iterate, pick ASP Core. I personally use c# for all private projects and proving concepts even though my employer is a Java shop. It allows me to stay focused on solving the problem and not constantly wrestle with issues such as Gradle dependency resolution glitches in IntelliJ.

Given that you can transfer skills from .NET to J2ee I recommend guys to pick up ASP get a couple of services to get a feel web development as you can still get jobs in Java even with that experience. Companies don’t care these days. In fact a lot of companies are going to Go so there’s that too.

Depends on your immediate term goal.

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Daniel Hernández Alcojor
Frontend Developer at atSistemas · | 8 upvotes · 997.1K views
Needs advice
on
BootstrapBootstrapBulmaBulma
and
UIkItUIkIt

I'm building, from scratch, a webapp. It's going to be a dashboard to check on our apps in New Relic and update the Apdex from the webapp. I have just chosen Next.js as our framework because we use React already, and after going through the tutorial, I just loved the latest changes they have implemented.

But we have to decide on a CSS framework for the UI. I'm partial to Bulma because I love that it's all about CSS (and you can use SCSS from the start), that it's rather lightweight and that it doesn't come with JavaScript clutter. One of the things I hate about Bootstrap is that you depend on jQuery to use the JavaScript part. My boss loves UIkIt, but when I've used it in the past, I didn't like it.

What do you think we should use? Maybe you have another suggestion?

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Replies (7)
Recommends
on
UIkItUIkIt

I have used bulma in several projects. We could not customize with the websites very well. Also when we need "quick solutions" Bulma is not suitable (I mean basic animations, to-top buttons, transparent navbar solutions etc. For these solutions, you need extra js codes).

Everybody knows about Bootstrap (heavy but popular).

Now we start a new project with UI kit, I like it. Pros: It is fast and lightweight and imho it has very good UI. Cons: Small community. Documentation.

Check this link for kick-off. https://github.com/zzseba78/Kick-Off

Maybe it is helpful.

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Damien Lucchese
Front End Web Developer · | 6 upvotes · 551K views
Recommends
on
BulmaBulma

Been checking out Bulma, myself, and really dig it. I like that it's a great base level jumping off point. You can get a layout going with it, pretty quickly, and then customize as you want. It definitely sounds like it's the one you're leaning towards but a big factor would be who will be using it most? Your boss, yourself, others? Whichever you like best, you'll prob be most productive with but if in the end your boss says it has to be UIkit, then best to be open-minded and give it another shot. Sometimes you may not jive with new tools in your stack, at first, but then they can become tools you learn to love. Best to you in your decision! Take care & keep safe.

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on
DiezDiez

I've moved away from the concept of UI kits. Not that many support CSS grid. A lot of the icons are easier to use in SVG. I've had success in the concept of design framework and design tokens. I build my brand identity in Figma, and extract in Diez. Then Diez integrates into React and SASS. Much easier because design is decoupled from software in a central authority, and software updates automatically from design changes.

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Recommends
on
BulmaBulma

Honestly - pick whatever you are the most comfortable with. You can achieve almost the same effects with different tools, so why not use something I like using?

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Recommends

I used UIKit and Bootstrap many times. I love Bootstrap for fast, easy layouts to web apps. Clean code, easiest and fastest way to write layouts for front end if you learned something before about Bootstrap. Now in React I use React-Boostrap too. About UIKit I can say its nice idea. It's easier than Bootstrap. This is good option for trainee developer to learn how u should create layout of your website, but for me UIKit have not enough functions. If you need to create something complicated, u have an error in your mind. You must create amazing code combinations for UIKit where in Bootstrap in the same ideas you have easy solutions.

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Tomer Fishaimer
Frontend Architect at Aqua Security · | 2 upvotes · 541.3K views
Recommends
on
Tailwind CSSTailwind CSS

Actually it really depends on your needs, there are 3 types of UI frameworks you can use:

  1. A complete set of UI components like: https://react-bulma.dev/en/getting-started.

    Pros:

    Having a lot of pre-built UI components saves a lot of time

    Cons:

    need to learn the react framework and the bulma styles, and it's harder to customize to your needs

  2. A pure css framework, like Bulma, where you write all the components yourself.

    Pros:

    A lot of flexibility to build the components you need

    Cons:

    You are bound to Bulma classes and markup.

    Takes more time since you need to build the components

  3. A utility class framework like: https://tailwindcss.com/.

Pros:

Most flexible, mix and match classes as you like and build your own markup

Very easy to customize to your needs

Cons:

Might take time to get used to and takes more time since you need to build the components

If you choose options one, then it's just a matter of deciding what style you like (material,ant, bulma) and go with the library that implements it If you go with pure css and build your own components, I can't recommend tailwind enough, I've been finding myself building entire pages without writing a single line of css.

And if later on, the designer wants to make a change to some color, or size, I just need to change one value in the config file, and the entire app is updated.

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Needs advice
on
Node.jsNode.js
and
Spring BootSpring Boot

Hi, I am looking to select tech stack for front end and back end development. Considering Spring Boot vs Node.js for developing microservices. Front end tech stack is selected as React framework. Both of them are equally good for me, long term perspective most of services will be more based on I/O vs heavy computing. Leaning toward node.js, but will require team to learn this tech stack, so little hesitant.

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Replies (1)
Max Musing
Founder & CEO at BaseDash · | 10 upvotes · 504.8K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js
at

It's probably worth investing some time for your team to learn Node.js. There's very little overhead, especially with a framework like ExpressJS, so if your team is familiar with JavaScript it should be a quick process.

It handles I/O really well out of the box, and has a strong community with great open source libraries. Since you're using React on the front end, there's also some benefit to being able to use JavaScript throughout your stack.

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Decisions about Bootstrap and Spring Boot
Hampton Catlin
VP of Engineering at Rent The Runway · | 7 upvotes · 425.1K views

Starting a new company in 2020, with a whole new stack, is a really interesting opportunity for me to look back over the last 20 years of my career with web software and make the right decision for my company.

And, I went with the most radical decision– which is to ignore "sexy" / "hype" technologies almost entirely, and go back to a stack that I first used over 15 years ago.

For my purposes, we are building a video streaming platform, where I wanted rapid customer-facing feature development, high testability, simple scaling, and ease of hiring great, experienced talent. To be clear, our web platform is NOT responsible for handling the actual bits and bytes of the video itself, that's an entirely different stack. It simply needs to manage the business rules and the customers experience of the video content.

I reviewed a lot of different technologies, but none of them seemed to fit the bill as well as Rails did! The hype train had long left the station with Rails, and the community is a little more sparse than it was previously. And, to be honest, Ruby was the language that was easiest for developers, but I find that most languages out there have adopted many of it's innovations for ease of use – or at least corrected their own.

Even with all of that, Rails still seems like the best framework for developing web applications that are no more complex than they need to be. And that's key to me, because it's very easy to go use React and Redux and GraphQL and a whole host of AWS Lamba's to power my blog... but you simply don't actually NEED that.

There are two choices I made in our stack that were new for me personally, and very different than what I would have chosen even 5 years ago.

1) Postgres - I decided to switch from MySql to Postgres for this project. I wanted to use UUID's instead of numeric primary keys, and knew I'd have a couple places where better JSON/object support would be key. Mysql remains far more popular, but almost every developer I respect has switched and preferred Postgres with a strong passion. It's not "sexy" but it's considered "better".

2) Stimulus.js - This was definitely the biggest and wildest choice to make. Stimulus is a Javascript framework by my old friend Sam Stephenson (Prototype.js, rbenv, turbolinks) and DHH, and it is a sort of radical declaration that your Javascript in the browser can be both powerful and modern AND simple. It leans heavily on the belief that HTML-is-good and that data-* attributes are good. It focuses on the actions and interactions and not on the rendering aspects. It took me a while to wrap my head around, and I still have to remind myself, that server-side-HTML is how you solve many problems with this stack, and avoid trying to re-render things just in the browser. So far, I'm happy with this choice, but it is definitely a radical departure from the current trends.

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Bridget Sarah
Full Stack Developer at Bridget Sarah · | 10 upvotes · 642.7K views

I do prefer to write things from scratch however when it came to wanting to jump-start the frontend, I found that it was taking me a lot longer hence why needing to use something very fast.

Bootstrap was the boom when it came out, I didn't like it, to be honest, set in its way and a pain to over-ride and in addition, you can tell from a distance if you're using boostrap and as everything looks the same.

I came across Tailwind CSS as I wanted more dynamic features, you could say, I've been now doing it for a few days and I love it a lot. I've been practising with the full stack part installed but I an't we wait until I do a new project, and I'll e able to select exactly what I want. Much faster.

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Fonts and typography are fun. Material Design is a framework (developed by Google) that basically geeks out on how to assemble your typographical elements together into a design language. If you're into fonts and typography, it's fantastic. It provides a theming engine, reusable components, and can pull different user interfaces together under a common design paradigm. I'd highly recommend looking into Borries Schwesinger's book "The Form Book" if you're going to be working with Material UI or are otherwise new to component design.

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Book-Creating-Printed-Online/dp/0500515085

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Pros of Bootstrap
Pros of Spring Boot
  • 1.6K
    Responsiveness
  • 1.2K
    UI components
  • 943
    Consistent
  • 779
    Great docs
  • 677
    Flexible
  • 472
    HTML, CSS, and JS framework
  • 411
    Open source
  • 375
    Widely used
  • 368
    Customizable
  • 242
    HTML framework
  • 77
    Popular
  • 77
    Easy setup
  • 77
    Mobile first
  • 58
    Great grid system
  • 52
    Great community
  • 38
    Future compatibility
  • 34
    Integration
  • 28
    Very powerful foundational front-end framework
  • 24
    Standard
  • 23
    Javascript plugins
  • 19
    Build faster prototypes
  • 18
    Preprocessors
  • 14
    Grids
  • 9
    Good for a person who hates CSS
  • 8
    Clean
  • 4
    Rapid development
  • 4
    Easy to setup and learn
  • 4
    Love it
  • 3
    Great and easy to use
  • 2
    Boostrap
  • 2
    Devin schumacher rules
  • 2
    Community
  • 2
    Provide angular wrapper
  • 2
    Great and easy
  • 2
    Powerful grid system, Rapid development, Customization
  • 2
    Great customer support
  • 2
    Popularity
  • 2
    Clean and quick frontend development
  • 2
    Great and easy to make a responsive website
  • 2
    Sprzedam opla
  • 2
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Easy setup2
  • 1
    Love the classes?
  • 1
    Responsive design
  • 1
    Poop
  • 1
    Painless front end development
  • 1
    Design Agnostic
  • 1
    So clean and simple
  • 1
    Numerous components
  • 1
    Recognizable
  • 1
    Intuitive
  • 1
    Material-ui
  • 1
    Pre-Defined components
  • 1
    It's fast
  • 1
    Geo
  • 1
    Not tied to jQuery
  • 1
    Vue
  • 1
    Felxible, comfortable, user-friendly
  • 1
    The fame
  • 149
    Powerful and handy
  • 134
    Easy setup
  • 128
    Java
  • 90
    Spring
  • 85
    Fast
  • 46
    Extensible
  • 37
    Lots of "off the shelf" functionalities
  • 32
    Cloud Solid
  • 26
    Caches well
  • 24
    Productive
  • 24
    Many receipes around for obscure features
  • 23
    Modular
  • 23
    Integrations with most other Java frameworks
  • 22
    Spring ecosystem is great
  • 21
    Auto-configuration
  • 21
    Fast Performance With Microservices
  • 18
    Community
  • 17
    Easy setup, Community Support, Solid for ERP apps
  • 15
    One-stop shop
  • 14
    Easy to parallelize
  • 14
    Cross-platform
  • 13
    Easy setup, good for build erp systems, well documented
  • 13
    Powerful 3rd party libraries and frameworks
  • 12
    Easy setup, Git Integration
  • 5
    It's so easier to start a project on spring
  • 4
    Kotlin
  • 1
    Microservice and Reactive Programming
  • 1
    The ability to integrate with the open source ecosystem

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Bootstrap
Cons of Spring Boot
  • 26
    Javascript is tied to jquery
  • 16
    Every site uses the defaults
  • 15
    Grid system break points aren't ideal
  • 14
    Too much heavy decoration in default look
  • 8
    Verbose styles
  • 1
    Super heavy
  • 23
    Heavy weight
  • 18
    Annotation ceremony
  • 13
    Java
  • 11
    Many config files needed
  • 5
    Reactive
  • 4
    Excellent tools for cloud hosting, since 5.x
  • 1
    Java 😒😒

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is Bootstrap?

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based Applications that you can "just run". We take an opinionated view of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.

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Blog Posts

What are some alternatives to Bootstrap and Spring Boot?
Semantic UI
Semantic empowers designers and developers by creating a shared vocabulary for UI.
jQuery
jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
Material
Express your creativity with Material, an animation and graphics framework for Google's Material Design and Apple's Flat UI in Swift.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
Foundation
Foundation is the most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. You can quickly prototype and build sites or apps that work on any kind of device with Foundation, which includes layout constructs (like a fully responsive grid), elements and best practices.
See all alternatives