Developers continuously push the envelope, so building state-of-the-art applications will always be difficult and time consuming. It's the last 10-20% of develo

Developers continuously push the envelope, so building state-of-the-art applications will always be difficult and time consuming. It's the last 10-20% of development--the truly hard finishing part--that takes an application from "good enough" to "really cool" (also from being permanently labeled "beta"). As an analogy, there was a time when breaking the four minute mile barrier as a runner was considered impossible. Now it's quite common. Yet it's just as difficult to be the fastest runner. My advice would be to become familiar with a number of web frameworks _and_ understand how to build your own. This will take some time, but the benefit will be your understanding of when to use frameworks and when not to. One question to consider is what sort of projects are you planning to build? If it's a one-off for a client, would a framework get most of the job done? If it's a product you'll be hosting or distributing, will you be living with the code base for a long time and therefore benefit from the investment of your time in development?