I know some users. I don't know if they are ordinary. I think they are. My parents in their 50's. A grandmother of 80. Some friends which are 30 with a very average computer literacy.
Every one of them took fast with the iPad (that's how Apple is good), but no one of 'em'll fill 16gb of space.
Now bootstrap is important, yesterday it was the 360 grid, tomorrow it'll be another hype bandwagon.
First, Bootstrap did not standardize anything. It's a biased perspective to think so : most websites and most developpers don't even know about bootstrap. And those who know about it do not necessarily agree with it (per exemple I hate their JS coding style.)
Second, the myth about "changing your design without touching HTML". Sure, there're some cases where it's possible, but by experience it won't happen. Never. Sadly (or not), a redesign is always coupled with some HTML changes. Bootstrap does not change anything.
So, I think Bootstrap is far less important than, say, Wordpress was. It's a cool tool, useful for a "design dumb" like me to pull a quick demo without a true designer, but in the end it makes boring websites with boring code. It's also a overhyped tool, which won't survive (along with the whole stupid OOCSS thing.)
classList won't work in IE < 10.
XHR with promise is quite verbose.
Transitions won't work in IE < 10.
etc. These were examples, not a complete case list.
What's the point to use shims or polyfills if it means including some others libraries ?
JQuery is not slow. If you .addClass() two hundred divs, sure. But for basic DOM manipulations, it's fine.
JQuery is not heavy. 32kb. It may be in cache. You'll likely gain that twice 32kb by optimizing your png.
This anti-JQuery war is a silly fad started by people who don't make websites.
And as per arguments like "a fadein should not be mandatory blablabla", explain it to the client. It may work. Or it may not.
"I encourage you to give it a shot. Write your next application, library or just code for fun without jQuery. "
Been there, done that.
And it's a pain in the *
You'll find yourself needing a method to add or remove classes eficiently. So you'll rewrite .addClass() and .removeClass()
Then you'll need a clean way to make Ajax and callbacks. You'll rewrite .ajax() and .when()
Then you'll need to fade something in all browser. So you'll rewrite .animate()
Ad lib.
JQuery Minified and GZipped is 35k (not 90 as the op said, ignoring the gziping.) JQuery is cached in most browsers. The performance hit is not worth the pain of re-inventing the wheel.
The problem is not JQuery, it's bad code. Bad code won't magically disappear in vanilla JS.
You can't have multiple URL leading to the same information because of SEO.
Well, you can (with canonical meta and stuff), but it's not an ideal practice.
It is often better to cater to robots rather than to humans. A sad truth, highlighting Google's failures.
For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.)
42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means)
It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 hours of programming a day), keeps the 1000 best.
I feel always a little lost when I read tutorials which use SASSy/LESSy CSS. Illustrating exemples with a preprocessor means lots of web developers won't be able to read you.
Moreover these developers are not in the hype bandwagon (or they would be able to read SASSy/LESSy/whatever fashionable now), so they may need the most the said tutorials.
These learning websites never work for me.
I know starting with basics (operations, variables, string manipulation) is the sensible thing to do, but they bore me.
I always find easier (well, harder but more engaging) to read real code running a real simple application and trying to figure it out by breaking it.
(it's not a critic of learning sites or this one in particular. It's just they don't speak to me.)
If you want to do freelance work, learning PHP (or ASP) is mandatory. Sure, Ruby is great, but you'll keep stumbling on :
"our shared host is PHP only, we don't want to change for another"
"we want wordpress"
"our computer guys know a little PHP, we need PHP"
"what the fuck is Ruby ?"
So you'll try to educate your client, to explain why Ruby us great. But you'll fail, because most clients don't give a shit and, for their very basic needs, PHP is as good as ruby.