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Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

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Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s how I got through calculus. I learned how to integrate/differentiate once, then programmed those operations into my TI-82 using whatever awful version of basic those things supported.

You programmed SYMBOLIC integration on a TI-82 but couldn't do it by hand? Are you sure you are remembering that right? Symbol integration is non-trivial.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a mistake. Imagine you're instead a carpenter. You're being called up because the problem is specialized. Now as a carpenter, you go to the container store and then go back to your shop to dismantle prebuilt products and glue a bunch of different pieces from different containers together and present the Frankenstein cabinet as the product back to the customer. Also, you're on the hook for maintaining it. Is it…

Unfortunately this is true, as I grew more experienced I’m very careful with the dependencies I add to a project. I don’t work with React Native but I hear horror stories of how the hundreds of dependencies force you to either stick to the old versions of stuff or keep fixing or rewriting things that used to work. Seems totally unsuitable for a side project you want minimal maintenance over time.

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Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#205
> So this week, we're introducing a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory, so that all of your different tool factory factories can be produced by a single, unified factory. The factory factory factory will produce only the tool factory factories that you actually need, and each of those factory factories will produce a single factory based on your custom tool specifications.

Looks like someone's been doing too much enterprise Java progamming!

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The carpenter doesn't need a degree. The architect and structural engineer do. If you plan to be a programmer all your life, and a journey-man one at that, then feel free to learn-programming-in-21-days. If you're planning a career in software, then I think understanding fundamentals (database normalisation, the Order of a solution, the ideas of Coupling and Uncoupling, memory usage versus performance, the impact of…

The way I like to explain the difference between the two approaches — and therefore the two educational requirements — you are outlining here is the difference between being a software developer and a software architect. A software developer is focused on developing a certain feature or fixing a certain bug within the context of an architecture that's already determined, rarely making decisions about how to structure…

does what you’re making matter to people or not? It’s like that no matter what you’re doing. Y’all can sit around here and discuss, “what is a software architect” all you want.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#207
The difference is, that the universal hammer is in fact mostly good enough, or at least can be, if it's well designed, for everyone except people who are interested in simplicity for its own sake.

We had layers of complexity and frameworks and embedded scripting on literal 8 bit game consoles and it was still fast enough.

I think the problem he's describing comes from the fact that programmers like to build tools to make other tools. Give people a framework and they'll say "I can totally use this to make something someone else might do something cool with".

Perhaps it's some kind of desire to leave a legacy or make your mark it have something awesome on your resume, or just because nobody has any ideas for apps anymore that actually seem worth it to build.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#208
post #22

Related: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28920095 - Oct 2021 (296 comments) Why I hate frameworks (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635142 - Oct 2016 (66 comments) Why I Hate Frameworks (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203959 - March 2015 (63 comments) Why I Hate Frameworks (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6542817 - Oct 2013 (37 comments) Wh…

There must be some metric of the resonance of a particular piece by looking at the number of reposts and distribution of comments amongst them (plus an analysis of the sentiment of the comments and characteristics of the thread trees in each separate posting). Just looking at this listing, without looking at the comments in each one, this seems to have a sustained resonance. Maybe I’m biased–it certainly resonates wi…

> it certainly resonates with me!

I recently started getting into Javascript 2D game programming.

MDN has a nice simple straightforward tutorial[1] on how to make a Breakout game in pure Javascript. Having read this tutorial, it all fits my brain. It's simple and I understand it.

There are also lots of frameworks you can use, e.g. Excalibur, which also has a breakout game tutorial[2]. This does not fit my brain: there are vast number of classes to learn, and how everything fits together is not obvious at all.

While I was reading the MDN tutorial I was thinking to myself how I could easily build a framework to automate a lot of the stuff. (No doubt many others thought the same!) If I did build such a framework I would understand it well. It would fit my brain. But would anyone else understand it? Possibly not.

I suspect that what makes a framework easy to learn is, above everything else, good documentation.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Games/Tutorials/2D_...

[2]: https://excaliburjs.com/docs/getting-started/

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And interestingly, your argument also falls apart in the same way as the framework argument. It might make the average developer more productive on an average project. But most projects are not average, and neither are most developers. Everyone has some unique combination of strengths, just like every project has special cases that don’t fit within the box of a framework. A framework is great if you don’t know much a…

> But most projects are not average

I call bullshit. Most projects are average by definition. Otherwise that wouldn’t be the average.

Re: Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)

#210
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating React the library with create-react-app which is a collection of pre-configured tooling for making SPAs. React on it's own is very much just a library with a couple functions.

factory to build a factory I see . Most including the standard docs would recommend using create-react-app unless you really know what you are doing

The standard docs can go fuck themselves. I've never seen a community try and fuck up a good library as hard as the React community does.

React itself is great. Almost everything built on top of it and every word spoken about it on the internet is garbage.

The incessent focus on shit like CRA, NextJS and people shitting themselves over "NIH" is going to kill React in the next decade and we're going to be stuck with something 10x shittier in it's place. Well done team!

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