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Most people do not hate frameworks. They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and

by blunte 5y ago

Most people do not hate frameworks. They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and which gets thrown out and replaced with a common framework when they leave the company. Unless one's need is trivial or very specific to a narrow scenario, frameworks are helpful. At the least, they give new devs a common understanding to begin from when they join or take over an existing project.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Zababa 5y ago
We have a custom framework at work, with a really large codebase, and I find it was easier to understand than any open-source framework I've worked before, because everything is well-encapsulated and changes have very local consequences. That wasn't my experience with most open-source web frameworks, that often seem optimized for conciseness and people that already know them. I also reject the idea of "They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and which gets thrown out and replaced with a common framework when they leave the company". The popular open-source frameworks were created by people like you and me. Those people were good, for sure, but not perfect, just like us. They also often try to make something very generic that may not fit your specific use case. Trying to bend a framework to do something it's not meant to isn't better than writing your own code. I think that these days we have too much worship of open source code. Sure, not having to write code is sometimes very nice, but sometimes a few lines of code can help you avoid a dependency.
- blunte 5y ago
  Isn’t your custom framework exactly what I said? Use an existing one , or write one that only you (and your team) know. Of course, the bigger your codebase and the more unique your needs, the more reasonable it becomes to create your own.
  - Zababa 5y ago
    > Isn’t your custom framework exactly what I said? No, it's not. > Use an existing one , or write one that only you (and your team) know. Not only my team, pretty much any people working with it in the company. The difference with something like Django is that people don't know it before coming in the company, which doesn't make a big difference. To go back to the message I replied to, you said > "They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and which gets thrown out and replaced with a common framework when they leave the company." I disagree. There's no reason to replace our custom framework, as it's working well and since the codebase is getting a bit old, this would be just too much. We also have good training material around it, better than what you can usually find about open source framework online, without even mentionning mentoring. Then there's > "At the least, they give new devs a common understanding to begin from when they join or take over an existing project." The flip side of that is that you need to recruit developers that know a framework, which will by definition limit your talent pool.
commandlinefan 5y ago
I don't know if I would say that I hate frameworks, but in general, I find most of them to be pointless. I use them because my teammates insist on them, but I spend far more time working around them than I spend taking advantage of their strengths - if there even are any. I've been working with Java for 20 years now, and Spring is the ultimate "framework" - it's so framework-y that it doesn't actually do anything or offer anything, it's just a thing that gets in your way. When people defend Spring, they invariably say "but why would you want to do all of that by yourself" and I say "do all of what by myself?" The Spring framework saves you the trouble of... calling the "new" operator (by making everything a global variable)? At least with an ORM framework I can see what it actually does, even if I don't really want it to do that, but Spring just doesn't do anything except add libraries you don't need and make your stack traces useless. Ok, I take it back, I don't hate frameworks, I hate Spring.
- mmcdermott 5y ago
  I had that "I hate Spring" moment a few years ago as well. Another part of the problem is that at some point you are programming in Spring more than Java. I've even interviewed candidates who struggled to tell the two apart. The question becomes "would I rather program in Java or Spring?" and, generally, for all its other shortcomings, I'd prefer to program in Java over Spring.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Yea, whenever a new abstraction makes the ”you won’t have to do all these things yourself” promise, I guarantee that the abstraction just replaces those things with another, potentially bigger set of things you’re going to now have to do.
- parksy 5y ago
  I hated React when I had to jimmy it into a Drupal website, I loved it when I was doing React + Redux on a data-driven project. Pre-shopify, I loved Magento when we were just building basic eCommerce websites. I hated it when we had to provide bespoke functionality to suite various niche business purposes because rarely did any of the community plugins work well together, and life became a routine of building custom intermediary plugins that resolved the conflicts - but at least Magento had a way to resolve conflicts between plugins. I loved Doctrine when I could define my object model with simple block comments. I hated it when the client's business model enforced an object model incompatible with Doctrine's, and we had to extend Doctrine to allow for it. I tried making a game from scratch many times over the years. From writing my own assembly pixel routines (draw a line without gaps... that's a fun challenge), to decoupling logic from rendering, custom double-buffering, etc. At the end of the day, fuck it, Unity does everything I need much more efficiently than I have the time to figure out. Unless you're doing really low-level embedded (and even these day's there's off the shelf hardware with frameworks rather than bit-bashing IO ports), having no framework at all is usually worse than having "a" framework. Want to build an entire game engine from scratch or why not just use Unity? If you have a good reason and can justify the cost of doing the stuff Unity does yourself, just to achieve the stuff Unity can't do, then go for it! Like I guess, I don't hate frameworks, but I don't LOVE them either. Pick the tool for the job. I hate jingoism, where someone will tell you Redux is the only way we're going from now on because functional reactive programming is Jesus, or we've decided from now on the project will use webpack, even though it's been working fine for a decade using a different build strategy. Oh and we need to convert the APIs to GraphQL instead of OpenAPI on no budget, it's your fault for not understanding best practices duh...

by blunte 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Zababa 5y ago

We have a custom framework at work, with a really large codebase, and I find it was easier to understand than any open-source framework I've worked before, because everything is well-encapsulated and changes have very local consequences. That wasn't my experience with most open-source web frameworks, that often seem optimized for conciseness and people that already know them. I also reject the idea of "They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and which gets thrown out and replaced with a common framework when they leave the company". The popular open-source frameworks were created by people like you and me. Those people were good, for sure, but not perfect, just like us. They also often try to make something very generic that may not fit your specific use case. Trying to bend a framework to do something it's not meant to isn't better than writing your own code. I think that these days we have too much worship of open source code. Sure, not having to write code is sometimes very nice, but sometimes a few lines of code can help you avoid a dependency.

blunte 5y ago
Isn’t your custom framework exactly what I said? Use an existing one , or write one that only you (and your team) know. Of course, the bigger your codebase and the more unique your needs, the more reasonable it becomes to create your own.
- Zababa 5y ago
  > Isn’t your custom framework exactly what I said? No, it's not. > Use an existing one , or write one that only you (and your team) know. Not only my team, pretty much any people working with it in the company. The difference with something like Django is that people don't know it before coming in the company, which doesn't make a big difference. To go back to the message I replied to, you said > "They either use an existing framework, or they eventually end up creating a custom framework which only they understand and which gets thrown out and replaced with a common framework when they leave the company." I disagree. There's no reason to replace our custom framework, as it's working well and since the codebase is getting a bit old, this would be just too much. We also have good training material around it, better than what you can usually find about open source framework online, without even mentionning mentoring. Then there's > "At the least, they give new devs a common understanding to begin from when they join or take over an existing project." The flip side of that is that you need to recruit developers that know a framework, which will by definition limit your talent pool.

commandlinefan 5y ago

I don't know if I would say that I hate frameworks, but in general, I find most of them to be pointless. I use them because my teammates insist on them, but I spend far more time working around them than I spend taking advantage of their strengths - if there even are any. I've been working with Java for 20 years now, and Spring is the ultimate "framework" - it's so framework-y that it doesn't actually do anything or offer anything, it's just a thing that gets in your way. When people defend Spring, they invariably say "but why would you want to do all of that by yourself" and I say "do all of what by myself?" The Spring framework saves you the trouble of... calling the "new" operator (by making everything a global variable)? At least with an ORM framework I can see what it actually does, even if I don't really want it to do that, but Spring just doesn't do anything except add libraries you don't need and make your stack traces useless. Ok, I take it back, I don't hate frameworks, I hate Spring.

mmcdermott 5y ago
I had that "I hate Spring" moment a few years ago as well. Another part of the problem is that at some point you are programming in Spring more than Java. I've even interviewed candidates who struggled to tell the two apart. The question becomes "would I rather program in Java or Spring?" and, generally, for all its other shortcomings, I'd prefer to program in Java over Spring.
ryandrake 5y ago
Yea, whenever a new abstraction makes the ”you won’t have to do all these things yourself” promise, I guarantee that the abstraction just replaces those things with another, potentially bigger set of things you’re going to now have to do.
parksy 5y ago
I hated React when I had to jimmy it into a Drupal website, I loved it when I was doing React + Redux on a data-driven project. Pre-shopify, I loved Magento when we were just building basic eCommerce websites. I hated it when we had to provide bespoke functionality to suite various niche business purposes because rarely did any of the community plugins work well together, and life became a routine of building custom intermediary plugins that resolved the conflicts - but at least Magento had a way to resolve conflicts between plugins. I loved Doctrine when I could define my object model with simple block comments. I hated it when the client's business model enforced an object model incompatible with Doctrine's, and we had to extend Doctrine to allow for it. I tried making a game from scratch many times over the years. From writing my own assembly pixel routines (draw a line without gaps... that's a fun challenge), to decoupling logic from rendering, custom double-buffering, etc. At the end of the day, fuck it, Unity does everything I need much more efficiently than I have the time to figure out. Unless you're doing really low-level embedded (and even these day's there's off the shelf hardware with frameworks rather than bit-bashing IO ports), having no framework at all is usually worse than having "a" framework. Want to build an entire game engine from scratch or why not just use Unity? If you have a good reason and can justify the cost of doing the stuff Unity does yourself, just to achieve the stuff Unity can't do, then go for it! Like I guess, I don't hate frameworks, but I don't LOVE them either. Pick the tool for the job. I hate jingoism, where someone will tell you Redux is the only way we're going from now on because functional reactive programming is Jesus, or we've decided from now on the project will use webpack, even though it's been working fine for a decade using a different build strategy. Oh and we need to convert the APIs to GraphQL instead of OpenAPI on no budget, it's your fault for not understanding best practices duh...