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The "libraries over frameworks" notion is something I keep noticing in communities that seem to be more engineering-minded than rock-star-ninja-dev-minded. Wher

The "libraries over frameworks" notion is something I keep noticing in communities that seem to be more engineering-minded than rock-star-ninja-dev-minded. Where do you think this comes from? I think it's a mix of maturity on the part of the community members along with how often the language is used to do things that are harder than CRUD.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
I'd say it's exactly about "maturity" not in the emotional sense, but the "breadth and depth of professional experience" sense. A lot of the 'glamour' in the Bay Area is around web apps that 20-somethings use. As a consequence a lot of the headlines and centers of discussion are going to be around languages, platforms and paradigms that reflect that. And, these days, that would be dynamically typed languages, frameworks or framework-like 'libraries' and fad-following (which is where the "rock-star-ninja" meme comes from). I just try to filter the noise as best I can to glean the useful and interesting bits of articles and comments I read.
- gngeal 13y ago
  Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings. This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love, and so they create more jobs for this labor market to fill, which means more people want to fill it (since there are jobs there). Edit: 1) I would disagree that python is a "lousy" language; 2) To give some perspective regarding where I come from, the vast majority of my experience is with statically typed languages like C, C++ and Java; I prefer them and in my experience they are at least as easy to develop with as any of the dynamic languages that are popular.
    - dragontamer 13y ago
      I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables. Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily).
      - gngeal 13y ago
        I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables. There is very little in terms of "provability" that either C++ or its types give you. Proving anything really interesting (for example, the absence of race conditions in concurrent code) still seems like pretty much an arduous process in languages not explicitly designed for such things. Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily). That didn't seem very comprehensible to me, but if you're claiming that in Ruby, you can modify member variables of someone's objects, well, you can't, unless you use reflection as well (not only that, but the access to member variables is object-based, rather than class-based, so you can't access the member variables of an object from any other object, even if they are of the same class, unlike in C++ - so much for the "objects communicate by passing messages" in C++!). More to the point, in C++, you can always cast a pointer into something that makes the raw data accessible. There's enough stuff in C++ for you to blow your whole leg off instead of just shooting yourself into the foot.
        eric_the_read 13y ago
        In Ruby, you can break into any other object with a judicious combination of send() and instance_variable_{set,get}()
agumonkey 13y ago
I first saw this in clojure, and thought it came for the builtin immutability of most types. Meaning you can't have order problems with libraries functions, unlike in the mutable world where a framework will shield you a bit.
ebiester 13y ago
In my case, I'm speaking of a reaction to Spring and Struts. I personally use Grails on my recent projects, which is as close to batteries-included as it gets, but I occasionally have problems with square peg round hole problems, and fighting against a framework is more painful than a library. The problem with the framework is that we run into a steep hill when we must diverge off the path. A good framework gives a great story. Unit tests, integration tests, consistent layers, convenient and powerful ways to access the database without writing a giant SQL generator (if x return "and b.id = c.id" else return "b.name = "%" + name + "%")... But then, you hit the use case that the framework didn't consider. And suddenly, you either need to extend the framework (never pleasant) or go outside the framework for one portion, which means building all of the tools from the ground up. Or, more often, ignore testing, hack in the best way you know how, and hope nothing breaks. The library approach means that you have to build the integration pieces yourself. This is painful, but it means that when you reach a new use case, it isn't as large a jump to keep going. Each has tradeoffs. There are times when each is superior. Someone like Bob Martin would suggest that you build your system independent of frameworks and treat the web as a client/compatibility layer, and that you build your system of small composable parts so that the framework/library question is a minor one. (This has its own tradeoff with an abhorrent amount of plumbing code that comes along.) It all comes back to the problem at hand and how we judge the tradeoffs, like most engineering problems.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  Do you know of any shops that use Uncle Bob's approach (besides 8th Light, of course)? I don't; I wish I did. I agree that isn't something you'd use every time, but I feel there isn't a whole lot of data out there when people have used it. All I see online are devs whining about the extra work. I don't know what it is about the web, but it's as if we decided all of software architecture didn't mean anything and threw it out. My theory: it's harder to feel coupling in a dynamic language, thus it's just an academic concern!
  - ebiester 13y ago
    I have plans to try it in a side project. I too am skeptical about the rewards of setting up a CRUD system like that. It isn't that we've decided that software architecture meant nothing; rather, we settled on one architecture that is Good Enough. The View/Controller/Domain paradigm of Rails works for many projects.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago

I'd say it's exactly about "maturity" not in the emotional sense, but the "breadth and depth of professional experience" sense. A lot of the 'glamour' in the Bay Area is around web apps that 20-somethings use. As a consequence a lot of the headlines and centers of discussion are going to be around languages, platforms and paradigms that reflect that. And, these days, that would be dynamically typed languages, frameworks or framework-like 'libraries' and fad-following (which is where the "rock-star-ninja" meme comes from). I just try to filter the noise as best I can to glean the useful and interesting bits of articles and comments I read.

gngeal 13y ago
Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings. This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love, and so they create more jobs for this labor market to fill, which means more people want to fill it (since there are jobs there). Edit: 1) I would disagree that python is a "lousy" language; 2) To give some perspective regarding where I come from, the vast majority of my experience is with statically typed languages like C, C++ and Java; I prefer them and in my experience they are at least as easy to develop with as any of the dynamic languages that are popular.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables. Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily).
    - gngeal 13y ago
      I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables. There is very little in terms of "provability" that either C++ or its types give you. Proving anything really interesting (for example, the absence of race conditions in concurrent code) still seems like pretty much an arduous process in languages not explicitly designed for such things. Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily). That didn't seem very comprehensible to me, but if you're claiming that in Ruby, you can modify member variables of someone's objects, well, you can't, unless you use reflection as well (not only that, but the access to member variables is object-based, rather than class-based, so you can't access the member variables of an object from any other object, even if they are of the same class, unlike in C++ - so much for the "objects communicate by passing messages" in C++!). More to the point, in C++, you can always cast a pointer into something that makes the raw data accessible. There's enough stuff in C++ for you to blow your whole leg off instead of just shooting yourself into the foot.
      - eric_the_read 13y ago
        In Ruby, you can break into any other object with a judicious combination of send() and instance_variable_{set,get}()

agumonkey 13y ago

I first saw this in clojure, and thought it came for the builtin immutability of most types. Meaning you can't have order problems with libraries functions, unlike in the mutable world where a framework will shield you a bit.

ebiester 13y ago

In my case, I'm speaking of a reaction to Spring and Struts. I personally use Grails on my recent projects, which is as close to batteries-included as it gets, but I occasionally have problems with square peg round hole problems, and fighting against a framework is more painful than a library. The problem with the framework is that we run into a steep hill when we must diverge off the path. A good framework gives a great story. Unit tests, integration tests, consistent layers, convenient and powerful ways to access the database without writing a giant SQL generator (if x return "and b.id = c.id" else return "b.name = "%" + name + "%")... But then, you hit the use case that the framework didn't consider. And suddenly, you either need to extend the framework (never pleasant) or go outside the framework for one portion, which means building all of the tools from the ground up. Or, more often, ignore testing, hack in the best way you know how, and hope nothing breaks. The library approach means that you have to build the integration pieces yourself. This is painful, but it means that when you reach a new use case, it isn't as large a jump to keep going. Each has tradeoffs. There are times when each is superior. Someone like Bob Martin would suggest that you build your system independent of frameworks and treat the web as a client/compatibility layer, and that you build your system of small composable parts so that the framework/library question is a minor one. (This has its own tradeoff with an abhorrent amount of plumbing code that comes along.) It all comes back to the problem at hand and how we judge the tradeoffs, like most engineering problems.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Do you know of any shops that use Uncle Bob's approach (besides 8th Light, of course)? I don't; I wish I did. I agree that isn't something you'd use every time, but I feel there isn't a whole lot of data out there when people have used it. All I see online are devs whining about the extra work. I don't know what it is about the web, but it's as if we decided all of software architecture didn't mean anything and threw it out. My theory: it's harder to feel coupling in a dynamic language, thus it's just an academic concern!
- ebiester 13y ago
  I have plans to try it in a side project. I too am skeptical about the rewards of setting up a CRUD system like that. It isn't that we've decided that software architecture meant nothing; rather, we settled on one architecture that is Good Enough. The View/Controller/Domain paradigm of Rails works for many projects.