Introduction

How many of you consider yourself to be hardcore developers who only do backend coding and wouldn't be caught dead doing UI/UX coding or any of that fancy, flouncy, artsy stuff?

Yeah, I think I see pretty much a 90 percent show of hands.

Chances are, though, with that opening question I hit a nerve. In fact, I'm so confident that I did that I've now got you all wanting to know why.

As a developer, our job basically is to write software; this is something that requires deep, logical thought and an exceptionally analytical mind.

It's a rewarding and challenging job, one that we all love to do. But it has one fatal flaw:

Non-developers.

Those of you who work in an enterprise will know exactly and straight away what I'm about to say. I'm talking about the managers, the users, the project leads, the admin clerks, and the marketers—the list goes on and on. All of them have one thing in common: they don't understand what it is you do, why, or how.

They ask for an update on the major, super-important project you’re doing for them (and we all know that every project is major, super-important). So, you explain to them that the database is working, the database access layer is coming along, and the business rules are in good shape. And the whole time, you try to keep everything in layman's terms, but then you hear, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…Okay, but what does it look like?"

So, you fire up your project with its half-written UI done in a standard black on white (or grey) layout, only to be greeted by cries of,"What on earth is that! It looks terrible! We’re paying you to write software, not re-create the drawings of a 3-year-old child!"

We've all been there. We’ve all suffered the curse of those who only look at the visual side of things, such as the project manager who is blind to anything that's not "pretty" or the CEO who thinks the color mauve has the most RAM.

But what can you do about it?

You’re a developer, not a graphics designer. Sure, you can make it look reasonably good, but you should be spending time writing the code. After all, if there's no code, there's nothing to add a UI to. Problem is, the non-developers don't understand this. And, to be fair, you shouldn't expect them to. Unfortunately, though, they are very results-driven, and for them to be able to see a good-looking UI is a result. And when they see results, your life is that much easier.

Bottom line? You need Twitter Bootstrap.