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Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

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Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#51

The worst part of this kind of thing is that young carpenters honestly, really, truly, just need to learn to use a hammer. They can't even conceive of the problems that are being solved by the hammer factory, let alone the factory factory. But in the world of the factory factory factory, the apprentice carpenter (who really just wanted to drive a few nails) is now faced with trying to understand the gargantuan comple…

Everyone needs to learn to do calculus by hand before advancing to the calculator. People picking up frameworks without fundamental understanding is a shockingly common fallacy.

Wait, you're saying that calculators now do symbolic differentiation and integration (like sympy and mathematica)? Kids today...

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#53
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you certainly should learn arithmetic before using a calculator, right? But a calculator is more of a library than a framework, anyway, so your attempt at proof-by-analogy isn't at all resonating with me. (edit: I think I misread the comment I replied to and am now in the process of maybe figuring that out downthread.)

Calculators do a lot more than arithmetic these days. Without knowledge of calculus, most people think of a calculator as a magic “black box” that outputs square roots and cosines.

FWIW, I am willing to believe that I have misunderstood the comment I responded to, and that they are not making a sarcastic proof that people should not have to learn calculus to merely use a tool like a calculator, but that they in fact should do so, and I'd actually be willing to get on board with that? (But, as anti-framework as I am, I think that might be going a bit far.)

I frankly still can't tell as that's use of "fallacy" to describe "people picking up frameworks without fundamental understanding" is apparently extremely confusing to me as it isn't in the form of a fallacy--like, is the fallacy that this happens? that this is a problem? is it the thought which leads people to do that? etc.--so I automatically added stuff to the sentence to make it work and maybe I did it wrong.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone needs to learn to do calculus by hand before advancing to the calculator. People picking up frameworks without fundamental understanding is a shockingly common fallacy.

Wait, you're saying that calculators now do symbolic differentiation and integration (like sympy and mathematica)? Kids today...

My recent TI-nspire calculator had a track pad mouse built in…

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#55
post #47

I remember following up the Angular tutorial. I was about 15min into the tutorial, and I was already editing 8 different files. I never got lost so quickly. I lost a job because I could not use angular, but never felt bad about it. I remember somebody commenting here on HN about a developer conference, where the speakers were bragging about their software being complex. This is an awful trend with software, and is re…

That's why angular is hated so much. It makes easy things more complicate. In my opinion it's a bad framework. Use a good framework instead! Just because some (or a lot of) frameworks are bad, it doesn't meant that the concept of a framework is bad.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#56
post #5

Simplicity is easy to mandate: "just use simple tools!". It's not always obvious when the finished product looks wonky and slanted and has to be retrofitted several times that the complexity was always there, in the world. The complexity in our tools is hopefully there to help with some complexity in the world. In my experience, it's always the junior who shouts "This could all be so much simpler!".

> In my experience, it's always the junior who shouts "This could all be so much simpler!". Yeah, this is true. But I often wonder how much of this is because the seniors have given up on simplicity and since they have internalized the complexity it doesn't bother them anymore.

As a senior my goal is to write that really complex stuff and then hide it behind a simple interface that always works the way you expect so you never have to look under the hood.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#57
I'm not a huge fan of these pieces that don't speak to why frameworks are created in the first place.

The counter point to this is that the purpose of frameworks is to turn O(N) problems into O(k) problems by implementing a seam in the code.

The problem a framework ultimately solves is that some teams will choose to use screws, some will use a hammer and nails, some will use a nail gun, some will use glue, some will carve connecting joints, some will use metal and weld, some will take a large piece of material and carve it out, etc. etc. and now you have 50 different ways to perform one task, which is to get the end result of joining two objects.

That means 50 different on-boarding processes, and 50 different design paradigms to manage, 50 different classes of corner cases, 50 different monitoring/operational paradigms, 50 different hiring processes, etc. etc.

Sometime between 50-500 engineers it becomes necessary to properly framework-ize the unit of business logic that product developers work on, like a route, to prevent operational overload.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#58
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you certainly should learn arithmetic before using a calculator, right? But a calculator is more of a library than a framework, anyway, so your attempt at proof-by-analogy isn't at all resonating with me. (edit: I think I misread the comment I replied to and am now in the process of maybe figuring that out downthread.)

Calculators do a lot more than arithmetic these days. Without knowledge of calculus, most people think of a calculator as a magic “black box” that outputs square roots and cosines.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#59
Yes, the state of the industry is a hot mess, but I'm not sure this article rings true. Failing to leverage good frameworks is as big a problem as over using the bad ones. I would point to Rails as an example of an appropriate framework (and Laravel if PHP is your jam). The trouble is so many others are bad, incomplete or defunct, but I don't think the answer is the golang mantra of 'we don't need no stinking frameworks'. Seeing mediocre developers reinvent the wheel, slowly and badly, is super painful and wastes time and money. If you hate the frameworks available to you then perhaps you should consider finding a better ecosystem. Relax your bias and follow the happy developers, wherever that may lead.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#60

I do take the point but I feel like the era of the factory factory was a while ago and I'm almost nostalgic for it compared to the dubious soup that we seem to have to deal with now.

dubioussoup.ai Edit: I donno why, but the concept of dubious soup has me CRACKING UP right now.

We take your soup and pipe it into chat-gpt 4 and what you get is what you get.

The ever growing field of prompt engineering continues to grow.

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