> Frameworks are there because [...] people want to avoid writing boiler-plate This really depends on how the framework was designed. Some frameworks are real

> Frameworks are there because [...] people want to avoid writing boiler-plate This really depends on how the framework was designed. Some frameworks are really good at getting out of the way, and focus primarily on providing a library-like syntax (e.g. Flask for Python) with very little bundling of libraries. You can use a Flask instance inside of a desktop app as a library rather than piping to it Apache requests if you so need. Larger, more structured frameworks exist for the developer to focus on the business logic and not worry about the context (networking, auth, sec, data store, etc.). They bring together multiple standard libraries that everyone agrees on and bundle them in a context instance the developer can confidently rely on. This, too, is a great tool.