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I think the problem is more common than people think. It takes lots of bad frameworks to establish a single dominant one. It reminds me of the similar issue PHP

I think the problem is more common than people think. It takes lots of bad frameworks to establish a single dominant one. It reminds me of the similar issue PHP landscape was fraught with—lack of a framework/approach with no downside. Figuring which PHP framework to use was a problem of choosing between dozens of options, each with their own mighty cons. Every time a new framework came, it demonstrated an ability to fix all the known problems but time and again it faltered (Kohana, CakePHP, Yii). In the recent times, Laravel has provenly become a better choice than what was available only a few years back. It has grown a community of a considerable size and it's unlikely it would getting supplanted in future. I am guessing at some point in the future, the landscape would stabilise and a single approach would become the obvious choice for JS just like Rails is for Ruby.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
You're right, it is common and it's easy to forget that. Python in 2007 was Django, web.py, Subway, Turbogears, Pylons, Werkzeug, Zope, and a bunch of tools a lot of people have never heard of competing for space. Who needed all of those frameworks anyway? It took awhile but slowly what works and what doesn't was figured out and we've got better approaches. Web programming circa 2007 was by its nature simpler and despite that the Python community (which is a blip compared to the JS community today) churned out a lot of stuff. You can still build websites like it is 1999 but you've got a lot of other options now, too. Use the best parts and dip your toes into that stream of new stuff when you feel like it. Competition and progress beat the hell out of stagnation though.
fetbaffe 9y ago
I hope that never happens. Why? Frameworks solves a generic problem, but you in your project are solving a specific problem, hence you can never solve your problem better than what the Framework allows you to. Problem is rather developers don't know how to organize their code without the help of the Framework. If they knew, Frameworks would not be needed, only libraries. One Framework to rule them all will stifle progress, it locks the community into one size fit all mentality and therefore clouds the minds of the developers to not think about the possibilities outside their worldview. Laravel will, of course, eventually be replaced, as with all frameworks. Current hype now are "micro" frameworks. So all that effort put into the Framework will be partially lost due to it is locked to that Framework. Lessons learned ought to be, write reusable framework independent libraries instead.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

You're right, it is common and it's easy to forget that. Python in 2007 was Django, web.py, Subway, Turbogears, Pylons, Werkzeug, Zope, and a bunch of tools a lot of people have never heard of competing for space. Who needed all of those frameworks anyway? It took awhile but slowly what works and what doesn't was figured out and we've got better approaches. Web programming circa 2007 was by its nature simpler and despite that the Python community (which is a blip compared to the JS community today) churned out a lot of stuff. You can still build websites like it is 1999 but you've got a lot of other options now, too. Use the best parts and dip your toes into that stream of new stuff when you feel like it. Competition and progress beat the hell out of stagnation though.

fetbaffe 9y ago

I hope that never happens. Why? Frameworks solves a generic problem, but you in your project are solving a specific problem, hence you can never solve your problem better than what the Framework allows you to. Problem is rather developers don't know how to organize their code without the help of the Framework. If they knew, Frameworks would not be needed, only libraries. One Framework to rule them all will stifle progress, it locks the community into one size fit all mentality and therefore clouds the minds of the developers to not think about the possibilities outside their worldview. Laravel will, of course, eventually be replaced, as with all frameworks. Current hype now are "micro" frameworks. So all that effort put into the Framework will be partially lost due to it is locked to that Framework. Lessons learned ought to be, write reusable framework independent libraries instead.