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Not op but I have to disagree with this sweeping assessment. I think there is room for both approaches. I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced

Not op but I have to disagree with this sweeping assessment. I think there is room for both approaches. I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced over the years were things that side-stepped the popular or established frameworks and were more customized and focused solutions. They gave the business an undeniable edge over the cookie cutter competition, and by being well versed in the full stack, my team was able to implement new features at a fraction of the cost. Anyone who knows the underlying technology can pick up our work in not much more time than learning any off-the-shelf framework simply because our solution has fewer moving parts and the relationships between the business logic and the bedrock are direct and intuitive.

scarface74 4y ago
They gave the business an edge until someone else had to use your framework instead of a popular well documented one
twblalock 4y ago
> I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced over the years were things that side-stepped the popular or established frameworks and were more customized and focused solutions. They gave the business an undeniable edge over the cookie cutter competition, and by being well versed in the full stack, my team was able to implement new features at a fraction of the cost. Yes but that's different from being a cowboy coder or a cynic who rejects the concept of frameworks in the first place. You built a new framework customized to your business needs. To do that, you needed to understand the context of the business and your tech stack, understand why existing frameworks didn't fit, and build a new one that works well. It's a good example of not being a cog, which is what I was encouraging in my comment.
- jjnoakes 4y ago
  That's just it though - I wouldn't call anything we've built a "framework" at all. All of the projects were much simpler at their core than most frameworks I've ever dealt with. Of course, "framework" might have different definitions for different people. To me, by definition, a framework tries to be more generic than a custom solution, has more features that appeal to more than one use-case, and is designed to be flexible and fit multiple projects. The solutions I've had major success with were none of those things because the benefits we got (deeper knowledge of our stack, faster iterations, and features no one else could touch) way outweighed any perceived benefits of using something mostly off-the-shelf.
onion2k 4y ago
I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced over the years were things that side-stepped the popular or established frameworks and were more customized and focused solutions. No one can judge their own code. We all think we've written great stuff that other people hate working with. Even your team can be bad at judging it, because they can reach out to you if they get stuck. Those are awful ways to judge how good code is. In my experience the best measure of good, robust, well-written code is the opinion of the team maintaining it a year after you've left. If those people are singing it's praises and happily working on it rather than complaining about tech debt and saying they want to do a rebuild, then you can say you did a good job.
- jseban 4y ago
  That's some seriously self deprecating attitude, that can never be a healthy working environment.
- jjnoakes 4y ago
  I'm not judging my own code. I'm basing my statements off of the results-oriented perspective of the businesses I've helped. And based on their positions in the market, both at the time my team implemented the projects I'm referring to, as well as long after most of us have moved on and the projects are in maintenance mode or retired, I would objectively say we were highly successful.
  - breakfastduck 4y ago
    People often seem to overlook how different businesses operating in the same space can be purely because of a particular specialization or culture. Custom is best sometimes. And that's ok. A well thought though and implemented 'bespoke' framework (literally just a system) has no value based disadvantage over a public, well known, framework / approach.
  - chii 4y ago
    > I'm basing my statements off of the results-oriented perspective of the businesses there's different criteria for judging. Business criteria and business success is one (good) criteria, but there's also the criteria of good craftsmanship (which may contribute to business success indirectly by making future maintenance easier). This criteria is hard for a non-technical business stakeholder to judge, but easy for the maintainers.

scarface74 4y ago

They gave the business an edge until someone else had to use your framework instead of a popular well documented one

twblalock 4y ago

> I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced over the years were things that side-stepped the popular or established frameworks and were more customized and focused solutions. They gave the business an undeniable edge over the cookie cutter competition, and by being well versed in the full stack, my team was able to implement new features at a fraction of the cost. Yes but that's different from being a cowboy coder or a cynic who rejects the concept of frameworks in the first place. You built a new framework customized to your business needs. To do that, you needed to understand the context of the business and your tech stack, understand why existing frameworks didn't fit, and build a new one that works well. It's a good example of not being a cog, which is what I was encouraging in my comment.

jjnoakes 4y ago
That's just it though - I wouldn't call anything we've built a "framework" at all. All of the projects were much simpler at their core than most frameworks I've ever dealt with. Of course, "framework" might have different definitions for different people. To me, by definition, a framework tries to be more generic than a custom solution, has more features that appeal to more than one use-case, and is designed to be flexible and fit multiple projects. The solutions I've had major success with were none of those things because the benefits we got (deeper knowledge of our stack, faster iterations, and features no one else could touch) way outweighed any perceived benefits of using something mostly off-the-shelf.

onion2k 4y ago

I for one believe that the best solutions I've produced over the years were things that side-stepped the popular or established frameworks and were more customized and focused solutions. No one can judge their own code. We all think we've written great stuff that other people hate working with. Even your team can be bad at judging it, because they can reach out to you if they get stuck. Those are awful ways to judge how good code is. In my experience the best measure of good, robust, well-written code is the opinion of the team maintaining it a year after you've left. If those people are singing it's praises and happily working on it rather than complaining about tech debt and saying they want to do a rebuild, then you can say you did a good job.

jseban 4y ago
That's some seriously self deprecating attitude, that can never be a healthy working environment.
jjnoakes 4y ago
I'm not judging my own code. I'm basing my statements off of the results-oriented perspective of the businesses I've helped. And based on their positions in the market, both at the time my team implemented the projects I'm referring to, as well as long after most of us have moved on and the projects are in maintenance mode or retired, I would objectively say we were highly successful.
- breakfastduck 4y ago
  People often seem to overlook how different businesses operating in the same space can be purely because of a particular specialization or culture. Custom is best sometimes. And that's ok. A well thought though and implemented 'bespoke' framework (literally just a system) has no value based disadvantage over a public, well known, framework / approach.
- chii 4y ago
  > I'm basing my statements off of the results-oriented perspective of the businesses there's different criteria for judging. Business criteria and business success is one (good) criteria, but there's also the criteria of good craftsmanship (which may contribute to business success indirectly by making future maintenance easier). This criteria is hard for a non-technical business stakeholder to judge, but easy for the maintainers.