“Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, Use a Framework” They All Say • Hacker News Board

Re: “Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, Use a Framework” They All Say

#91

Post by girvo » Tue, Feb 04, 2014, 4:29 AM UTC

pfranz wrote: post #80

falcolas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. As a pilot school alumni, I can safely say that the Bernoulli principle, and more importantly how it applies to an open system like an aircraft wing, is pretty fuzzy for most of my former classmates (I know because I was tutoring them on flight physics). Understanding the cause and effect between your interactions with the flight stick and throttle is one thing, understanding the physics behind i…

It reminds me of something I've noticed watching artists work. Professionals will either know all of the underlying technology to get the result they want, or they know very little of it but are so familiar with the input/output they can get the result they want. Most all photographers know basic exposure rules, but there are some very good photographers that don't know much beyond that. They rely on trail and error…

Funny you say that about photographers. I learnt from trial and error, and after a few years was taking some photos that I'm still proud of today. Then, a few years ago I decided to learn the concepts and apply them to what I'd already learnt, and now I feel I'm even better. My best photos now are as good as (or a bit better) my older best photos, but I can capture them more consistently. It's really fun.

As an aside, the best thing I did was force myself to use a 1963 Minolta rangefinder, with one film type and speed only, for an entire year. Manual everything. This allowed me to really learn those concepts properly, but it was still steeped in trial and error; reading the concepts, then coming up with them afterwards from first principles is easily the best way for myself to learn a topic :)

Re: “Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, Use a Framework” They All Say

#92

Post by l0u » Tue, Feb 04, 2014, 7:10 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #18

We should be careful not to confuse "frameworks" with "libraries". Two very different things. The former, yeah I agree that newbies should steer clear of until they understand what's really going on, and have the knowledge to dig deep and take advantage of the power those frameworks give you, rather than using them as a folder setup and "automagic". I'm currently working on a series of articles (maybe a small ebook,…

ebook later, get it out there asap, would like to read. My thinking is very similar to your own.

Its actually something we've been doing for an API at work. The main reason was so we can easily port legacy code [read hundreds of includes/ and that type of fluff] into a PSR compliant system pretty much on the fly without having to jump through all the hoops of a framework - all while still having access to everything in packagist.

Re: “Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, Use a Framework” They All Say

#93

Post by pfranz » Tue, Feb 04, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #91

pfranz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of something I've noticed watching artists work. Professionals will either know all of the underlying technology to get the result they want, or they know very little of it but are so familiar with the input/output they can get the result they want. Most all photographers know basic exposure rules, but there are some very good photographers that don't know much beyond that. They rely on trail and error…

Funny you say that about photographers. I learnt from trial and error, and after a few years was taking some photos that I'm still proud of today. Then, a few years ago I decided to learn the concepts and apply them to what I'd already learnt, and now I feel I'm even better. My best photos now are as good as (or a bit better) my older best photos, but I can capture them more consistently. It's really fun. As an aside…

I really wish I could have thought of some specifics to make my point better. Most professional photographers do know basics of exposure really well, but may not know things like the inverse-square law when applying to flash photography (especially with the newer flash systems out there). Instead of using a light meter to take careful measurements, they fall back on abstractions, trial and error, and rules of thumb--like sunny 16 rule, their experience, and looking at the back of the LCD.

The only example I can think of is that I've heard Paul McCartney can't read or write sheet music.

Some people (like myself), feel the need to understand the underlying technologies in order to become competent. I don't feel like that's the only way to competency.

Re: “Don’t Reinvent the Wheel, Use a Framework” They All Say

#94

Post by aaronem » Thu, Feb 06, 2014, 1:27 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #58

jiggy2011 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is how do we define "from scratch", the common definition seems to be "Whatever I had to do when I started". Even if you throw out of the ORM and go with writing SQL queries by hand, do we need to understand how the database will parse the SQL, how it stores the data on disk and how it executes the query? The main reason to understand SQL when building a web application is really that the ORM doesn't prov…

Agreed. There is always a limit when it comes to going low level. Yes it probably is an overkill to understand how a db parses an actual SQL but helpful to understand how an ORM converts to a SQL query. This is again contextual. If you are writing your own database, then may be you do want to understand the parsing. But for web dev, may be not.

> Yes it probably is an overkill to understand how a db parses an actual SQL

Yes, I've thought that, too, but it turns out that, beyond a certain relatively low level of complexity, that's a great way to produce SQL queries which take a half hour to complete.

> but helpful to understand how an ORM converts to a SQL query.

Certainly, because there's a degree of complexity beyond which your ORM's going to start getting pathological and you're going to have to fall back on querying the database directly, which see point one.