I think there’s a valid point here about the changing nature of programming in a connected world. On the other hand, I think there are also real dangers that t

I think there’s a valid point here about the changing nature of programming in a connected world. On the other hand, I think there are also real dangers that the article didn’t highlight. The old sayings that “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” and that “it’s dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket” are as true as they ever were, and many of these modern, opinionated frameworks and plug-ins are excellent case studies. Sometimes, using opinionated tools is a strength. If what you want to build fits a framework’s natural usage, you can get up to speed quickly and avoid much of the laborious infrastructure work that otherwise goes with starting a new project. That can be a big win. However, sometimes it is a weakness. If you want to do something that isn’t quite what the framework does, breaking out of the box can be expensive, maybe even prohibitively so. Moreover, that applies not just when you first start a project, but also as the project grows and evolves, perhaps beyond the scale/scope the original tools were ever intended to support. And even if someone else comes along with a tool that is more suitable, it can be difficult to migrate. If all you know is how to glue components together, you can take advantage of the strengths, but you’ll struggle to overcome the weaknesses, and worse, you’ll never create new tools that serve you better or let you create something that isn’t merely a recipe made from the ingredients someone else gave you. I thought it was sad the other day, when MailChimp’s annual report web page[1] was doing the rounds on the web design forums because of some interesting effects used in its presentation, and the first question asked usually wasn’t “How does that work?” but “Does anyone know a plug-in to do that in $FRAMEWORK?” I’m betting that the next attention-grabbing web page using a new and interesting effect will be written by someone who asked the first question. [1] http://mailchimp.com/2012/ http://mailchimp.com/2012/