> Can you live without it One should interpret "you" as "y'all" here. An individual can maintain their own framework-in-a-small-project pretty reasonably. Howe

> Can you live without it One should interpret "you" as "y'all" here. An individual can maintain their own framework-in-a-small-project pretty reasonably. However, as you build a team and codebase, there is a great benefit to either using an existing framework with its existing documentation or to extracting your framework into something that can be separately documented. That way, it is easier for new-joiners to understand the overall structure and woodgrain of your project which lets them more easily understand any given piece. I agree with your overall comment though. More resources like http://rebuilding-rails.com/ http://rebuilding-rails.com/ should be available so that people understand how their frameworks actually fit together. EDIT: Except for beginners. If you're starting out programming, it is more important for you to be able to get things working than to worry about writing a framework from scratch. If a framework has solid tutorial docs and especially solid installation docs, go for it. However, if you find yourself trying to glue 3 different frameworks together without a tutorial to follow, you probably want to be using different tools. Find something like http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754 which comes with automated testing and tells you how to set it up.