Why I Hate Frameworks

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431.12

by Jebdm • 18 years ago

126 125 18 years ago

discuss.joelonsoftware.com

patio11• 18 years ago

An oldie (2005) but goodie.

Although it is less about frameworks and more about a disease which was largely contained to Java enterprise-y architecture stuff. (I say as a practitioner in that field... remind me why we are using the Factory pattern here, again?)

mattculbreth• 18 years ago

It made its way into the .NET space also many years ago. Working on a pretty big application now with a big team. We have two sets of Factories, with interfaces between them so that nobody ever sees an actual class. Egads!

johnyzee• 18 years ago

> remind me why we are using the Factory pattern here, again?

Because everything in J2EE, including design patterns, is driven by salivating greed, megalomania-level egos and lemming mentality (I have a similar comment in the original thread).

fizx• 18 years ago

In fairness, the Factory pattern is useful when you want to unit test classes with mocks. In dynamic languages, this is easy, but more static languages require jumping through hoops.

Alternately, you could use something like Google Guice, but that's (sorta) a factory-factory.

Basically, no one likes the situation, but they've chosen their tradeoffs, which they see as the lesser of N evils.

swombat8• 18 years ago

Rails: Here's a kick-ass hammer, a kick-ass saw, a kick-ass measure tape, etc...

Oh, and if you need them to be different from the default, you can modify them as you want, but we think the default works for most people.

statictype• 18 years ago

But don't bother checking for the spring mechanism that retracts the measure tape in case it breaks or the power supply connection point on the saw if it stops working.

Those bits just magically work!

vesan• 18 years ago

There must be hole in the spring mechanism testing procedure

swombat8• 18 years ago

They don't magically work. You'll understand the mechanism when you know a bit more about how to build a measure tape and a saw. Also, all the so-called magic is extensively and automatically tested, and so an order of magnitude more reliable than your own custom-rolled spring mechanisms.

thomasmallen4• 18 years ago

If Rails were a toolbox, all of its tools would break under duress. Regarding Ruby:

"And furthermore, for me, programming languages and their runtimes are tools. I think they are for a lot of us. You wouldn’t continue to use a hammer whose head keeps flying off when you take a swift backswing, would you?"

Good read: http://cbcg.net/2007/04/22/python-up-ruby-down-if-that-runti...

sofal• 18 years ago

He also goes on to say:

I am discounting Rails here: I think Rails is great for what it is and I’ve had nothing but good experiences with it precisely because it is so “opinionated”. Its a very productive environment and manages to successfully avoid the runtime problems that I’ve personally hit in the past.

So... are you trying to make a point about Ruby or about Rails? Dare I give out the clichéd "Rails != Ruby" response here?

mdasen• 18 years ago

Frameworks can sometimes be annoying. It's like learning a new sub-language on top of the programming language as there is a certain amount of familiarity you need with a framework's calls (ex. to program in Python, it goes a lot faster if you know that it's len(list) not list.length() and similarly if you're using Rails it's important to know that there is no validates_is_number, but there is validates_numericality_of). So, you start learning all these things that may or may not apply to your project - the language of the framework. And in some places it slows you down and you feel like there's abstraction just for the sake of abstraction, but in the end I think it's worth it.

I also think Joel misses something: most programmers are bad programmers. They'll dig you into holes, write lots of spaghetti string code, etc. At least when they're using a framework there's some constraint on their madness. Frameworks (generally) make it a tad difficult to work outside of their constraints and so the default becomes to work in that standard way. So, you don't get people doing weird things as often - like building a string that is the page that they'll echo out like the piece of PHP I'm working on today does (guess they didn't realize that you could simply go out of PHP mode to do that).

clintavo• 18 years ago

I guess I'm one of those bad programmers who does "weird things" , I often create a string with my entire page and then output it. I thought it made more sense since I now have a string that I can run regexes on or find/replace if necessary. Also it makes it easy if I decide I want to cache the page somewhere, I think I must be "dumb and gets things done."

mixmax• 18 years ago

I think there's a wee bit of differnece between creating a string with a whole page because you don't know that you can jump in and out of PHP mode and creating a string with a whole page in order to do regex'es on the string

:-)

Ramone• 18 years ago

PHP (I assume we're still talking about PHP) has had output buffering for about a decade. So yeah that is a weird thing. ;)

johnrob• 18 years ago

I've done this before. If you're the sole owner of something, and especially if there will never be a designer in the mix, I think it makes sense to stick with what you are (and more importantly will be) familiar with. I once used python string substitution as a poor man's template system, because I knew that when I came back to that code months/years later, I'd still know how string formatting works w/o having to refer back to documentation.

dasil0033• 18 years ago

Nothing really wrong with that per se. The problem is if at one point you decide that's just the way to do things and you never learn new approaches. If you want to be a good programmer you have to try different things and learn the pros and cons for yourself. Best practices are a decent jumping off point, but developers often overestimate their own best practices that they've learned while working on certain types of projects. It's especially insidious among very smart developers who work in a narrow field, because their reputation causes their wisdom to be mis-applied by junior developers and cargo-culters.

bockris• 18 years ago

> I also think Joel misses something

Just FYI. This was post on the "Joel on Sofware" discussion group but the author is Benji Smith.

http://benjismith.net/

I like his blog. He used to post a lot more but he's been busy with a new project. (and a HD crash as of this morning.)

tjr• 18 years ago

In other words, by installing frameworks, you will be able to experience the power of frameworks?

rockbilly• 18 years ago

Or by using a framework, you will keep your code more consistent and within better practices.

axod9• 18 years ago

"most programmers are bad programmers"

You should hang around better programmers.

justindz• 18 years ago

A friend convinced me to try AppFuse once. I have a burning, probably un-justified hatred of Eclipse, so I tried the AppFuse + NetBeans tutorial.

That may be the most unproductive I have felt in my entire life. I made a damn login form and it took like 12 pages of tutorial, tons of setup, generating a whole bunch of files that seemed like they could have been done algorithmically because they are always the same, editing like nine different XML files with little bits of glue, and eventually like one or maybe two lines of code.

Then, I got to wait for the WAR to compile each time I wanted to test a change, because the tutorial didn't seem to know about a developer mode which probably exists.

I hate to sound all ranty and partisan, but I could find no way in which that process could be efficient and couldn't imagine anyone doing it voluntarily unless they were ordered or just had no exposure to the rest of the world.

Also, I sort of object to having code stuffed in an eight-folder deep hierarchy where the preceding seven folders contain nothing at all. That's a lot of wasted navigation and clicking time and distraction.

arockwell4• 18 years ago

There's most likely a developer mode, but that's only good for reloading a change to a Java class file. Reloading an xml file will still take a restart of the servlet container. I agree with you that there is basically nothing efficient about the entire process.

arockwell4• 18 years ago

On a related note, I saw this on reddit this morning: http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/apidocs/org/apache/xmlrpc/server...

What's sad is that I have no idea if this is a joke or not.

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

Perfect thing to show people, when they want to know if Java is a good fit for their problem. Even a Pointy Haired Boss, shown this, might understand why Rails or Django or something might be a better way to go than dealing with this.

EDIT: OK, so instead of Java, that should read "to know if enterprisey Java frameworks are a good fit for their problem." The irony is, that I just was IM'ing a friend about how this isn't the fault of Java the Language, but the "enterprise architecture" community that write Java frameworks like this.

dgabriel2• 18 years ago

Java is not the problem, the architecture is the problem. If you try hard enough, you can make something unwieldy and atrocious in ANY language. That's why enterprise architects get the big bucks.

axod9• 18 years ago

That's a ridiculous statement. Idiocy can be written in any language, including Java.

st3fan6• 18 years ago

The Apache XML-RPC framework is a complete joke. It is completely over-engineered with crazy patterns and stupid extensibility hooks that nobody is waiting for.

When Polar Rose still used XML-RPC we rolled our own framework that integrates well with Spring. You basically expose your POJO and be done with it ...

http://code.google.com/p/polarrose-spring-xmlrpc

khill• 18 years ago

It's funnier with the Xzibit reference.

EliAndrewC2• 18 years ago

On a similar note, the code parse an XML document in Java:

    Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse("test.xml");

That's not even a framework; it's just what's in the standard library for parsing XML.

ynd2• 18 years ago

I bet they were looking for extensibility.

I wonder if they ever thought of providing two interfaces.

1. The first is the common case.

    Document doc = new DocumentBuilder().parse("test.xml");

2. The second is more cumbersome but provides options.

    Document doc = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(opts).newDocumentBuilder(opts2).parse("test.xml");

michaelneale• 18 years ago

You can lay for that in the gang of four book which recommended things like "abstract factory" - the odd thing was, I thought most of those authors were ex smalltalkers?

lallysingh2• 18 years ago

I've seen good frameworks (OWL, Nitrogen + Powerplant, maybe 1 or 2 more), and I've seen a crap-ton of bad frameworks (any web framework on java, minus maybe WebObjects).

They're necessary, but they're hard to do right. The man who did Powerplant said he went through about a dozen different designs before getting one he liked. That's why it was often so useful. Most times, people say "hey, let's take these APIs and let people subclass! yay!"

And that's how you end up with crap like doGet(), doPost(), etc.

jimbokun2• 18 years ago

"minus maybe WebObjects"

What made WO great were the tools. There was still complexity there, but WOBuilder and EOModeler made the whole process very productive. You could think of your data model, your interface, and your business logic independently of each other, and then use the tools to hook them together in a way that made sense. Because of the way the tools were designed, they actually made using good design for your application easier than using bad design.

That's the main thing missing from all the frameworks I see today, integrated tools that automate the tedious parts and encourage good design practices.

To me, the WO tools go on the heap with the Lisp Machine, the Xerox Park Smalltalk environment and HyperCard, as old development technologies that are still ahead of today's state of the art.

EDIT: spelling correction

gnaritas• 18 years ago

That would be Smalltalk not SmallTalk, and some of us still use it, daily, for web apps. It might not be in wide use, but it isn't on the scrap heap.

coolestuk• 18 years ago

I would agree with you, apart from the remarks about "the (scrap) heap" :-) . I still use two of those technologies (WebObjects and Hypercard) almost every day, and I never used either of them until about 5 years ago. For what they do, they are peerless. For information about using WebObjects I'd suggest people visit http://www.wocommunity.org, and if anyone's interested in Hypercard, try http://www.runrev.com (a modern cross-platform hypercard).

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

Over-complexity is common in the Java space. I was aghast at using JMS. You make a Context so that you can tell it to make a ConnectionFactory, so that you can then ask that thing for a Connection, then you finally get to login. You can then instantiate Producers and Consumers and finally get messages.

Why do I need to have 5 different objects when one would do? Having 5 different objects did absolutely nothing for the client code except make it more complex. (And this actually complicates good coding for the user experience. When we notify the user of network problems, I have to add additional code to see if objects exist in the first place just to prevent exceptions.)

It would've made no difference if there was just one Object. (Except for shorter code.) I could use it to login to a server. I could use it to register interest in a topic then ask for messages on that topic. If I want to connect to a different server, then I could instantiate a second object. Why do I need 5 freaking instances to do the most basic thing possible?

arockwell4• 18 years ago

This also makes unit testing extremely diffcult since you have the joy of creating mock objects for your Context, ConnectionFactory and Connection. I have all but given up writing test code at work. The various j2ee frameworks I have to use make it almost impossible.

st3fan6• 18 years ago

Drop Classic J2EE and learn Spring. It will make things sooo much easier and manageable.

st3fan6• 18 years ago

"""Over-complexity is common in the Java space."""

Yes, in a SPECIFIC area of the Java space.

There is a huge group of people who believe that J2EE and its complexities are a major pain the ass. That is why great frameworks like Spring, Guice or Stripes exist.

Sun loves you when you use J2EE/JSF/EJB/JMS/JWHATEVER. But there are serious alternatives that are more lightweight, easier and less intrusive.

Of course you will not add value (read: buy into) to the Sun Enterprise Ecosystem :-)

Staying away from (most) 'Enterprise' Java standards has worked very well for me. I really enjoy working in Java.

jm4• 18 years ago

Have you seen Spring lately? I'm not sure it's much of an improvement. Stripes is nice as far as Java web frameworks go, but it's fairly simple and this is where the problem lies.

Someone comes up with a tool that's great for a specific job. Later, someone else comes along with a slightly different problem and the tool changes a little to accomodate them. Then a few others. Before you know it every feature under the sun is added to handle every possible scenario.

Now you're stuck with crappy middleware. It does a decent enough job after you configure it properly and strip it down to only the modules that apply to your specific problem. It's not so bad because you've been using it for a while and you know it inside and out. Plus, it can be used to solve everything. It can probably even cure cancer with the right module and proper configuration.

But sooner or later someone else comes along, decides this nifty universal tool is a steaming pile of shit and sets out to invent something simpler and less bloated. And it will only be better because it doesn't have everything, including the kitchen sink, bolted onto it. It's focused and lean. But then someone comes along with a slightly different problem than what it was intended to solve and the hot new framework with all the buzz starts going bad just like the last one.

Look at Stripes. It's just a better version of Struts2 which was based on Webwork which was intended to be a better Struts 1. Eventually, more and more cruft will be added to Stripes so it becomes as bad as what it was designed to replace and someone will come along and invent a better Stripes.

In my opinion, this is the biggest problem with frameworks. Many developers prefer to have a universal tool instead of having several that are good for different jobs so we end up with this cycle of cruft.

edw5193• 18 years ago

Here's the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about...

The purpose of "assisters" like frameworks and higher level languages is NOT to make good progammers more efficient.

It's to make mediocre programmers more likely to produce something of value and to make poor programmers capable of producing anything at all.

And if the bell curve tells us anything at all, it's that these "tools" target 90% of all programmers.

But think about it, my fellow top 10% (lol), do you really need all this stuff? If you're working alone or on a small team with a clear objective, haven't you always had everything you needed with low level tools? If you need any higher level tools or reuseable components, haven't you already been building these all along?

Sure it's fun to play with new things and learn from others, but when it comes time to really produce, don't we all know how to (and need to) roll with what we know?

The need for frameworks and high level languages only becomes apparent when we grow so large that we can't find enough senior hackers. Only when you dip down into the mediocre masses do you need this help.

snorkel3• 18 years ago

I agree completely. Web frameworks add a layer of code bureaucracy that really doesn't need to be there in most cases. Reading and setting browser cookies is not that hard. Creating and reading web forms and validating inputs is not hard. Creating a relational database schema and objects that store themselves in that schema is not hard. You can do all of this directly in mod_python, essentialy by buildng your own framework, so you really don't need Django (I'm know, I'm a heretic for saying so) But doing all of these things directly mod_python takes time to learn how to do it reliably and efficiently. So I understand Django's appeal to people who picked up a Python book and asked "How do I create an event calendar web site in five mouse clicks?" and didn't see a direct answer to that question so they went with a framework. Personally I'd rather not toil under the tyranny of someone else's framework, especially when they suggest you need to create Factory for a Consumer then connect it to an Active Bridge connector... no thanks, I'll just use "mod_python import Cookie" instead.

DanHulton4• 18 years ago

"essentially by building your own framework"

Why build your own framework when there's one already there? Already well-used, well-tested, well-extended?

Sure it may be easy enough to do, but is it really worth it?

I, for one, would much prefer to be spending my coding time writing application logic than Yet Another Validation Library.

stcredzero2• 18 years ago

Code bureaucracy? A friend of mine managed an Extreme Programming project for the Department of Defense. When he first started out, the paper bureaucracy required to create a new class amounted to two full business days! He got that whittled down to two hours.

coliveira• 18 years ago

My biggest problem with frameworks is that, although they save you a lot of time upfront, you need to spend a lot of energy learning concepts that may not be necessary for your application. So, the time you save coding is partly spent in learning things you may or may not need. If you do everything by yourself initially, at least you will know when it makes sense to use the framework. This is my approach with web development: Try to do whatever I need without the help of a framework. Then, I will know where a framework can help or not, and use it the next time I need a specific functionality.

mariorz• 18 years ago

this is no doubt tangential to your original point, but you should stay away from mod_python. You're walking into a version coordination nightmare (apache+DB+python). Debugging is a pain and your apache processes now load a python interpreter (each!). I suggest you take a look at wsgi.

chez173• 18 years ago

"Only when you dip down into the mediocre masses do you need this help."

And what is wrong with that? Some of us aren't the programming gods you are. If it helps people why get so high and mighty about it? I know with your superior intellect us philistines might seem dumb to you, but maybe you should stop writing about how smart you are when you can't even spell "programmers" right.

scorxn• 18 years ago

Amen. If the goal of programming is to liberate humanity from tedium, what's with this kind of elitism? Many of us live happy lives as programmers with zero formal training but relentless curiosity; having never cracked SICP or taken an electronics course but producing solid work -- often with the help of high level languages and frameworks. I mean shit, isn't that the whole point? To let anyone make something effective?

edw5193• 18 years ago

Struck a nerve, huh?

This was partially in jest (notice the lol), and I realize this is sometimes hard to convey in writing. Sorry.

But there's also a lot of truth in it, too.

No one is born a mediocre programmer. It's a choice.

Notice I didn't say a "junior" programmer. There's a difference. A junior programmer has less experience, but has a good attitude, is willing to learn, and practice his or her craft to get better. A mediocre programmer is just lazy and thinks he or she knows better.

This was directed at the thousands of lazy thoughtless programmers I've had to clean up after over the years. You know the ones. They refuse to follow accepted standards. They name their variables whatever they feel like at the moment. Good luck figuring out what "a" "aa" or "aaa" mean. Or locating them in a text editor. They use single entry, multiple exit. Good luck changing one line of code in the middle of that. They rewrite the same functions over and over, so I have to change all 14 versions. And spend the next 2 weeks regression testing.

I only wish these people were required to use a framework that forced them to conform to anything that would have made my life a little easier.

If "high and mighty" means "wants to get work done" or "cares about others", then thank you. Some of us choose to write clear, effective, easy to maintain code without a framework. If you ever have to maintain my code, perhaps you'll understand.

russell2• 18 years ago

Fundamentally, you need to learn your craft. I have just inherited a large project based on Hibernate. I dislike it because there is all this crap between me and the database. I am proficient in SQL as well as Java and I don't like masking a very powerful language with a weaker Java-centric abstraction. If you are going to develop backends you need to understand databases and SQL. If you don't you will end up with an application that doesn't scale and is difficult to maintain.

dallasrpi• 18 years ago

Lets see I can use Rails and build something or I can spend my time building something like Rails from scratch. Not a tough choice. The top ten percent probably don't reinvent the wheel when they don't have to. Do you write all your own libraries too? Maybe your situation doesn't fit the mold but your claims about efficiency and programming prowess are a bit absurd.

azanar2• 18 years ago

> The top ten percent probably don't reinvent the wheel when they don't have to.

True, but they can invent the wheel because there isn't one, and they can do so in a way that others will find it useful as well. It is a different point than edw519 is making, but what he said made me think about where I disagreed and why. The purpose of code libraries, is to make everyone more efficient, by solving a problem so others don't have to. If that means a programmer can produce twice as much functionality within a given time frame, or is able to produce any functionality at all where he couldn't otherwise, there is still a net benefit for everyone. This should not be scoffed at; it is the reason why we are able to produce software as featureful and useful as we do. Imagine each of the XFCE, KDE, and GNOME teams having to rewrite X.org all over again, and how much less each of those desktops would have to offer right now if they did. I'm willing to trade useful functionality sooner for less machismo.

But libraries don't always achieve this, and the degree to which it doesn't determines which people will be motivated to create a replacement. If a framework solves a common problem, but does so in a painful, unwieldy, or hard to understand way, some hacker out there will probably think it a better, more efficient choice to just write and use a new solution. It might be a fork of or series of patches to the original framework, or it may be an entirely new codebase -- which of these routes to follow is a judgement call. Nevertheless, it requires what I think is an important distinction, which is the ability to not just understand what problem the framework solves, but how it solves that problem. And not understanding it just in following what each line of code does, but why what steps it takes work. At that point, you end up leveraging a framework far more that relying on it. If something tomorrow were to happen that required you leave it behind, it would be a pain in the ass, but not a brick wall.

There is also the question, more important that the above in my mind, of understanding if you actually have the problem the framework solves, or if you are attempting to shoe-horn. But I worry that might be a bit off-topic of this particular thread, and would probably warrant another 3-4 paragraphs of musing.

st3fan6• 18 years ago

"""It's to make mediocre programmers more likely to produce something of value and to make poor programmers capable of producing anything at all."""

You make this sound as if you are the great programmer who does not use frameworks but instead reinvents the wheel every time.

Are you really sure you do not use frameworks or libraries in your own work?

tyler2• 18 years ago

Okay great. Well, you go ahead and hack up your project in assembler, making sure to build everything (including the network stack) from scratch. Let's have a race. If only all of our competitors were as misled and arrogant as you. :)

axod9• 18 years ago

Thinking outside the box, and doing things in the non-approved way, is what gives you a competitive edge over your competition.

If it makes sense to hack up a project in assembler, do it. It may give you a massive advantage.

Zak• 18 years ago

I once implemented CGI in Scheme. It's a long story involving trying to deploy to a shared hosting environment. I could implement CGI in most languages I know in under an hour, but if somebody already wrote a CGI library, I'll just use that.

If the details of passing data over HTTP and interacting with a database aren't a critical part of my project, I'm not going to do it by hand. I'll find some existing library or framework to do it for me. It's not that I can't produce something without help. It's that I have a problem I want to solve, and it isn't how to communicate over HTTP or store and fetch my data efficiently.

nihilocrat• 18 years ago

The more people talk about J2EE, the more I think it was invented to give programmers busywork and multiply their workload with no increase in productivity.

snorkel3• 18 years ago

Sort of reminds of project management software: it's just there to keep the project manager busy.

DanHulton4• 18 years ago

Frameworks - used properly - can be INCREDIBLY helpful.

Why develop my own routing code when there's already a robust, well-tested version available? Or validation code? Or payment authorization code?

Though it needs to be said that the number one thing a good framework does is GET OUT OF YOUR WAY. I've seen some Java frameworks that take an hour to put together a simple Hello World and that's just nonsense.

Currently I'm using Kohana, which is nice because it's really very simple and easy to extend. So far I've been able to spend so much more of my time actually writing business logic instead of routing logic and the like.

mattmcknight3• 18 years ago

Unfortunately, JSR-168 compliant portlets are perhaps the crowning example of horrible implementations of an insane standard.

st3fan6• 18 years ago

I stopped reading after "In the process, I'm evaluating a bunch of J2EE portlet-enabled JSR-compliant MVC role-based CMS web service application container frameworks."

ynd2• 18 years ago

That was humor :)

The rest is funnier. Give it a try.

rantfoil• 18 years ago

Was anyone else put off by "And, if you want to kill your ex-girlfriend, there's really no substitute for a ball-peen hammer"?

I get it's a joke, but violence against women, when used in a semi-professional context in a community of software engineers is one of those things that keeps more women out of the field in the long run.

I'm not trying to be PC intentionally -- it just struck a raw nerve for me.

axod9• 18 years ago

That's just.... ridiculous. The main thing that keeps women out of the industry is the fact they don't want to be in the industry and for you to suggest otherwise, is sexist.

tolmasky• 18 years ago

This is about as ridiculous as trying out one bad programming language and then writing an article titled "Why I Hate Programming Languages". Clearly the author has a problem with one particularly bad set of frameworks he's dealing with now, and one set of framework-making mentalities. Yes, there are bad frameworks. There are good frameworks too. I don't imagine anyone draws their own buttons on the screen anymore. To continue the discussion in any general format is useless, since there are countless examples of bad frameworks and countless counter-examples of good frameworks. A more compelling discussion would be one on what makes certain frameworks useful rather than trying to place a final value judgement on the idea entirely.

jaytee_clone• 18 years ago

I feel the analogue here is a bit off.

I'd say a framework is more like a factory that produces a variety of fixed-size spice racks (among with other products). You have to learn what button to press to get the right ones, and the spice racks produced will never be exactly how you want them to be.

If you want to quickly generate lots of generic spice rack, then a spice rack factory is all you need. But if you want something really outstanding and unique, then a factory may be anti-productive, and you are better off building it with your own hands.

dasil0033• 18 years ago

The essay itself is funny and rings true, but then in the comments the author says:

"What I'd really like to find are some appropriate libraries that I can use to provide several kinds of functionality for my project."

And then lists a bunch of high-level website functionality requirements (user accounts, content management, etc). I realize that the J2EE landscape was drowning in complexity and was pretty dismal in 2005, but this guy doesn't understand the issues involved in developing web applications.

First, to suggest that individual libraries can provide re-usable high level web application code is completely ludicrous. It can't work for so many reasons:

* All those libraries will have to interact, and the interface between them will be complex. If they do work together they will end up being tightly coupled and before you know it you have a framework.

* High level functionality that includes data models, persistence, and presentation layers is not generic enough to effectively be a library. The complexity and configuration would quickly balloon out of control before it met even the requirements of 5% of web applications.

* Such libraries would end up being far more constricting than a traditional framework. A good example is Drupal, which is a very powerful framework/CMS with an impressive hook system, and an extremely high code to functionality ratio. Anything you might want to do with a website can probably be done in Drupal using a combination of existing modules, and you can write additional modules that access almost any part of the system and modify its behavior. The problem is that fine-tuning of the interface or certain kinds of customizations become very difficult under the crushing weight of the underlying assumptions that Drupal makes to enable it's magnificent generic-ness. The result is that all the various sites made with Drupal end up feeling very Drupal-y and there's a disincentive to really design your UI from the ground up and create a very optimized application.

What J2EE has blinded the author to is the fact that web frameworks exist to solve the most common problems that come up over and over again in web development. He needs to go write a few PHP applications to get a feel for the issues, then try something lighter-weight like Django or Rails that confronts those issues directly and then basically gets out of the way. In the first half of the decade it was hard to find a good lightweight framework because people were still wrapping their heads around the actual issues that needed to be solved. Nowadays, not so much.

dang• 3 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20180924092925/http://discuss.joe...

Why I Hate Frameworks

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