Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

factoryfactoryfactory.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 407 posts

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#101

Post by jiggawatts »

reillyse wrote: post #96
jonas21 wrote: post #48

I don't get it. I assume the author is trying to make it sound absurd that you would need all these layers of factories to build a simple spice rack and, by analogy, that frameworks are also absurd. But if you were building spice racks at scale, of course you would build them in a factory! And you'd use machinery made in other factories. And those factories would have tools and machines made in yet other factories. T…

Yea it’s nonsense. Factories are fantastic. If you want to do something as a hobby, sure don’t use the most advanced tools and do it by hand, but for everyone else especially professionals who are charging other people for their time and effort using the best possible tooling is essential. In fact, if somebody didn’t use a common library or framework and instead “rolled their own” it’s downright irresponsible, obnoxi…

I use the same argument for IDEs versus fancy text editors like EMACS. Sure, you might prefer the specific keyboard shortcuts, but IDEs objectively make developers more productive through features like source code integration, debuggers, and refactoring capabilities.

Use whatever you like on your home projects, but at work you should be using whatever is most efficient.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#102

Post by post-it »

Yeah but React is really good. A lot of these articles[0] delve into an analogy that they twist into a complicated mess and say "hey look at how complicated frameworks are." But React isn't complicated. Most kinds of interaction, even for the smallest apps, are easier with React than with vanilla JS. I've never felt like I'm managing a factory factory factory when using React. And if I do, it's easy to peel back the veil and write vanilla JS alongside React.

[0] I realize this was probably one of the first of such articles and thus has fallen victim to [1], but someone did post it today.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunn...

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#103

Post by rhdunn »

Frameworks are good if what you are trying to do aligns with the model/architecture of that framework. Trying to do something outside that gets exponentially more painful the further away you are from that framework.

The same also applies to external libraries and the architecture of your library/application.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#104

Post by mmerlin »

tempest_ wrote: post #60
killthebuddha wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Beautiful Soup scrapes data for Dubious Soup model training

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#106

Post by beachy »

reillyse wrote: post #96
jonas21 wrote: post #48

I don't get it. I assume the author is trying to make it sound absurd that you would need all these layers of factories to build a simple spice rack and, by analogy, that frameworks are also absurd. But if you were building spice racks at scale, of course you would build them in a factory! And you'd use machinery made in other factories. And those factories would have tools and machines made in yet other factories. T…

Yea it’s nonsense. Factories are fantastic. If you want to do something as a hobby, sure don’t use the most advanced tools and do it by hand, but for everyone else especially professionals who are charging other people for their time and effort using the best possible tooling is essential. In fact, if somebody didn’t use a common library or framework and instead “rolled their own” it’s downright irresponsible, obnoxi…

What with Google and now GPT, it's critical that your framework is well talked about on the internet. Otherwise searching "show me some code to do XYZ using the frankenframework" will come up empty and then it's game over for your framework.

That makes building your own framework even less of a good idea than it used to be.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#107

Post by hobomatic »

JohnFen wrote: post #77
spicybright wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely common, and was one I fell into as a junior dev myself (early 2010's). Some reasons (based on my experience): - University classes were either very low level, or using some new framework to increase your employment prospects - All the experienced devs would hop jobs every few years, leaving less opportunity for mentorship. - Lack of convenient resources for gaining base knowledge. Googling "how to make a to…

> a good engineer has know where to go for the right information That colleges aren't teaching this as a first-rate topic is a real failure. This is, in my opinion, the most important skill any engineer should have.

... or a student.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#108

Post by paulryanrogers »

hayst4ck wrote: post #73
crdrost wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related: "Write libraries, not frameworks," which goes more into depth about how frameworks establish precisely such a "seam" and the responsibilities it entails. https://www.brandons.me/blog/libraries-not-frameworks

> Frameworks' key trait is that they impose limitations on the programmer. Rather than providing a set of new things the programmer can do, they establish a boundary on the things the programmer can do. Simply stated and very insightful. This is a way better article than the posted one. Another way of thinking about this is that a framework is a regulating authority on a tragedy of the commons. The commons in the cas…

Not sure it's always the key trait. In software frameworks are so often accompanied by a rich library of packages or code that folks may consider another important trait is their baseline of functionality.

Some frameworks are "batteries included" while others are a "bag of reusable components".

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#109

Post by w7 »

sn1de wrote: post #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 framewo…

I'm not sure I'd describe the golang community's attitude as a complete write-off of frameworks. I don't think I personally know a Go developer who doesn't use some sort of web framework (I personally use Echo, for example).

Rather I think it'd be better phrased as "frameworks should use simple abstractions and methods as often as possible", which the language naturally pushes people towards imo. I believe this causes most Go frameworks to be referred to as "microframeworks".

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#110

Post by daniel-s »

Two sides to this. Author uses everyday life to describe the multiple layers of abstraction in software engineering. That's precisely the advantage of software: that abstraction is easier to construct—by simply writing down rules in text files—than mechanical engineering or other fields.

That said, author is not wrong. Reminds me of talks from Bob Martin about frameworks and software architecture. Summarised and linked (shameless self-plug) here: https://www.compilatrix.com/docs/framework-there-to-screw-yo...

Post reply on HN