Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I have been creating software for 20+ years and I have personally never seen a case where 'in the end' it wouldn't have been better to use a framework. And mostly actually a framework which is as opinionated and feature rich as possible. These frameworks don't grow randomly; they are based on actual needs. When they are young they answer mostly to acute needs of the developer, when they grow they automatically grow into stuff 'most companies' need. And that's 'your company' as well; you can think you are different, but that's not really true. If you try to be different, you mostly do a lot of work which you shouldn't have. Yes, there is Google. Yes there is Facebook. But you are not those. And you won't become those. Also most companies are not IT companies; non-IT companies benefit even more from frameworks and rigidity; in most cases it's better to remake or form your business process to the framework/software than the other way around. Other people did that heavy lifting already; why should you try to do that again?

I'm not sure where you work, but this is my experience from using 'wysiwyg' clipper & dbase software in the 80s to Delphi frameworks in the 90s to web frameworks. People think they are very different from the start and then (usually after a management change) they notice the same stuff happens everywhere.



Are you talking about frameworks or software products? There is a very good argument around building custom software versus buying a product that matches your argument. In that case, I strongly agree. You should find products that either match your business process or change your process to match the products.

With regards to frameworks. I find it hard to believe that none of them would work out in the long run. I wonder if you are under-estimating the cost involved from the developers to replace or create these frameworks from scratch. This also seems like a selection problem more than an inability of frameworks to meet any development need. I mean they do exist for a reason.

That said, most software products are pretty horrible. Many frameworks are equally bad. Does this mean you should custom build everything? Of course not, you company is not going to be able to afford the time it takes you to write your own ORM, your own web framework, your own logging library, etc... It is your job to make compromises that will allow your company to achieve its goals.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: