It’s Not You, It’s Us

A Breakup Letter to Bootstrap

Bootstrap, you’ve been with us from the beginning. As the Nasdaq Design team grew, you were there. You were a solid foundation for us to build upon. You helped guide us when our direction wasn’t clear. You promised to help us rapidly prototype and iterate on our designs. And you delivered on all of it. For that we will forever be grateful.

As you know, it wasn’t always perfect. Your prescriptive rules could sometimes get in the way. They made us do things we didn’t want to do. Over-specifying. Over-nesting. Reactive !important’s. I know you had your reasons, but in many ways they were holding us back.

You also weren’t open to change. Sure, your variables are great and we could easily swap out your colors. But that is all superficial. Trying to change anything below the surface was difficult and tedious.

We blame ourselves. It was unfair of us to try to mold you into something you are not and were never meant to be.

We’ve grown apart. It’s not you, it’s us.

Our team has been together for over two years. We have multiple, large scale projects under our belts. We have a clear, well-defined direction. As we start fresh with a new pattern library, we know we can go it alone. Forge our own path.

Our next pattern library will be built on our own framework-one that meets the specific needs of our team and our projects. A framework we will feel confident changing and molding at will. Please know, it will be influenced by you. Entire components may remain. But our base framework will be ours. We will no longer start with you and override to meet our needs.

You were great and just what we needed in the beginning.We wish you luck with your upcoming release. We’ll be sure to check out your new features and see if there is anything we can incorporate. But it’s time for us to move on.

Love,
Nasdaq Product Design