3 ms·

In practice, performance is rarely the bottleneck. On the job, most developere care about shipping on time and spending less time rewriting things as they lear

In practice, performance is rarely the bottleneck. On the job, most developere care about shipping on time and spending less time rewriting things as they learn via experience. Anyone who avoids frameworks is going to be in for a world of hurt when they have to explain to their boss "I know the project is 3 months late but I saved 100kb in bundle size"

hinkley 6y ago
Yes, but when the framework continues to grow 100kb release after release we blame the person who uses it for doing so. If you don't like it, stop using it. You can't win, and there will always be a developer ready and willing to kick you while you're down.
lhorie 6y ago
Counter point: I've seen projects that were blowing their budgets/deadlines due to: - people not being familiar w/ the chosen framework and being unable to figure out how to accomplish some of the deliverables - wrong framework for the job - analysis paralysis figuring out which frameworks to use - using the framework wrong and then drowning in code debt The point of the article, I think, is that there's a tangible difference in performance between _similar_ frameworks, but which isn't often considered when choosing frameworks. You'll often see developers say that they prioritize developer experience over things like runtime characteristics of a framework and there's a lot of handwaving about "maintainability". This despite there being extremely complex apps out in the wild written in obscure frameworks (e.g. lichess uses mithril.js and the code looks just fine). There's clearly a disconnect somewhere when, for example, facebook announces a homepage redesign using the latest and greatest tools and immediately people start complaining about its performance. I would not buy a slightly wobbly table from a carpenter that wants to use a more ergonomic hammer, over a not wobbly table from a carpenter that uses a cheap hammer. Similarly, I think what the article illustrates is that a developer should also act like a craftsman and critically think about the effectiveness of their tools in terms of end results, rather than blindly accepting tool marketing/status quo and disregarding the quality of the end product.
- mikelockz 6y ago
  I like your table analogy. I would think that a more ergonomic hammer would also have tangible benefits like the ability to work longer and faster, creating more tables per day and lowering the overall costs of production resulting in cheaper tables. Would customers be willing to buy a cheaper table that's wobbly vs a more expensive table that's not?
  - lhorie 6y ago
    I'm not comparing a wooden stick with a high end hammer. I would think a competent carpenter would have a decent enough hammer, but not necessarily the shiny cool x-titanium-3000(tm), because any difference, if they exist at all, would be well into diminishing returns territory. At the end of the day, the wobbliness of the table is a result of whether the carpenter cares about table wobbliness more than which hammer they use. However, it may say something about the level of craftmanship and competence of the carpenter if they got suckered into buying a well advertised x-titanium-3000(tm) to compensate for an unwillingness to put in the effort to master core carpentry skills. Another similar analogy is an audiophile buying gold plated HDMI cables for better sound quality, oblivious that the reality is that the signal going through said cable is using a digital protocol with error correction.
enahs-sf 6y ago
While there’s some truth to this, 3 years down the road when the codebase is a spaghetti nightmare, all the original authors have moved onto other companies and the impending refactor is looming, management starts to wonder: was it really worth it?
- somestag 6y ago
  I wish that were what happens. Then maybe management would learn over time and the industry would smarten up. Instead what happens is that the old developers built big things on-time so they were "good developers," and then the new developers struggle with the code and so management assumes the new devs are less competent.
  - goatlover 6y ago
    Probably the old developers did so also because being on time meant skimping on technical debt due to management setting unrealistic deadlines.
eeZah7Ux 6y ago
> Anyone who avoids frameworks is going to be in for a world of hurt when they have to explain to their boss "I know the project is 3 months late but I saved 100kb in bundle size" Perhaps they failed to educate management on the consequences. 3 billion people in the world have slow Internet access and pretty old phones and PCs. Many websites can be too slow for every day use and this leads to increasing digital divide and inequality.
austincheney 6y ago
Why would you think avoiding frameworks means rewriting things? Most of the arguments people advance supporting frameworks seem rather hollow, as in based upon imaginary assumptions.

hinkley 6y ago

Yes, but when the framework continues to grow 100kb release after release we blame the person who uses it for doing so. If you don't like it, stop using it. You can't win, and there will always be a developer ready and willing to kick you while you're down.

lhorie 6y ago

Counter point: I've seen projects that were blowing their budgets/deadlines due to: - people not being familiar w/ the chosen framework and being unable to figure out how to accomplish some of the deliverables - wrong framework for the job - analysis paralysis figuring out which frameworks to use - using the framework wrong and then drowning in code debt The point of the article, I think, is that there's a tangible difference in performance between _similar_ frameworks, but which isn't often considered when choosing frameworks. You'll often see developers say that they prioritize developer experience over things like runtime characteristics of a framework and there's a lot of handwaving about "maintainability". This despite there being extremely complex apps out in the wild written in obscure frameworks (e.g. lichess uses mithril.js and the code looks just fine). There's clearly a disconnect somewhere when, for example, facebook announces a homepage redesign using the latest and greatest tools and immediately people start complaining about its performance. I would not buy a slightly wobbly table from a carpenter that wants to use a more ergonomic hammer, over a not wobbly table from a carpenter that uses a cheap hammer. Similarly, I think what the article illustrates is that a developer should also act like a craftsman and critically think about the effectiveness of their tools in terms of end results, rather than blindly accepting tool marketing/status quo and disregarding the quality of the end product.

mikelockz 6y ago
I like your table analogy. I would think that a more ergonomic hammer would also have tangible benefits like the ability to work longer and faster, creating more tables per day and lowering the overall costs of production resulting in cheaper tables. Would customers be willing to buy a cheaper table that's wobbly vs a more expensive table that's not?
- lhorie 6y ago
  I'm not comparing a wooden stick with a high end hammer. I would think a competent carpenter would have a decent enough hammer, but not necessarily the shiny cool x-titanium-3000(tm), because any difference, if they exist at all, would be well into diminishing returns territory. At the end of the day, the wobbliness of the table is a result of whether the carpenter cares about table wobbliness more than which hammer they use. However, it may say something about the level of craftmanship and competence of the carpenter if they got suckered into buying a well advertised x-titanium-3000(tm) to compensate for an unwillingness to put in the effort to master core carpentry skills. Another similar analogy is an audiophile buying gold plated HDMI cables for better sound quality, oblivious that the reality is that the signal going through said cable is using a digital protocol with error correction.

enahs-sf 6y ago

While there’s some truth to this, 3 years down the road when the codebase is a spaghetti nightmare, all the original authors have moved onto other companies and the impending refactor is looming, management starts to wonder: was it really worth it?

somestag 6y ago
I wish that were what happens. Then maybe management would learn over time and the industry would smarten up. Instead what happens is that the old developers built big things on-time so they were "good developers," and then the new developers struggle with the code and so management assumes the new devs are less competent.
- goatlover 6y ago
  Probably the old developers did so also because being on time meant skimping on technical debt due to management setting unrealistic deadlines.

eeZah7Ux 6y ago

> Anyone who avoids frameworks is going to be in for a world of hurt when they have to explain to their boss "I know the project is 3 months late but I saved 100kb in bundle size" Perhaps they failed to educate management on the consequences. 3 billion people in the world have slow Internet access and pretty old phones and PCs. Many websites can be too slow for every day use and this leads to increasing digital divide and inequality.

austincheney 6y ago

Why would you think avoiding frameworks means rewriting things? Most of the arguments people advance supporting frameworks seem rather hollow, as in based upon imaginary assumptions.