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The law of leaky abstractions - as systems become more complex eventually you rely on more abstractions that try to hide complexity.

What makes it worse in the front-end framework world is that either:

1-Projects become convoluted with 3rd party libs to solve a problem

2-The framework maintainers eventually introduce APIs that aren't backwards compatible and existing ones stranded or deprecated

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When discussing this problem with ChatGPT it indeed said the best solution for this is for frameworks to be designed in a way that encourages extensibility: so a framework should stick to its core principles but allow “plugins” to extend its functionality for very specific use-cases. But I understand there’s always a trade off here, as simplicity in the framework shifts the complexity to the application.

One example of a framework that takes this approach is Apache Royale. It’s a reboot of the AS3 language and component library that works like Adobe/Apache Flex but compiles to JS targeting the browser runtime. This refactored Flex was rebuilt from the ground up with a Pay As You Go (PAYG) philosophy where components are composed of „beads“ on a strand that enable composition of the functionality you need rather than the kitchen sink.

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