Frameworks Bootstrap vs PureCSS

Bootstrap was a Twitter project. You can't buy that kind of publicity.

 

It tackled some things differently and got the mind share. Wasn't the best, fastest or first.
Foundation | The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world. was kind of there or near enough, but obscured by twitter's reach. I recently used foundation for email in a rails app and it's quite a blast! ( good; responsive emails )

Recently I've been trying to move away from grabbing bootstrap, but soo many easy examples to help. so many sites are obviously bootstrap too. Not that this is bad, familiarity helps the end user.

I went through a phase of trying to materialize sites and following aspects of BEM. I've stopped now except for 'applications' of a business-like nature. i.e. the sort of admin/management areas. Public facing, meh, not found many who love it over familiar UI of yesterday. I'll let google push it more! I did use it exclusively on one client site, said he didn't like it, could it be more google like... interesting conversation followed.

I've instead, been reaching for the tachyons and atomic css approach. Interesting is a one-word description. Once over the WTF is going on it starts to make sense. Definitely more verbose than btn-primary btn-blue, but I know btn-blue might not be blue after a few overrides... or in certain parents, it's red etc.

TACHYONS - Css Toolkit
Full re-write in 10 days with tachyons and functional CSS: A case study (Part 1)
https://www.sitepoint.com/atomic-css/

It only really makes sense in applications you have a lot of control over. To add all the bits say to override a forum skin... not sure. It's on the cards to try though, it might be easier than chasing down override bugs.

...and like you, I'm not a designer, much more function over form. So it's hard to beat using a framework that has 99% of your needs covered out of the box. I do like pure, any of the lighter ones. Just have too many bootstrap classes in the noggin.