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Comment by austin-cheney | Hacker News Reader

I hear this a lot and it is mathematically incorrect.

Frameworks solve two business problems:

1. Candidate selection

2. Clearer division of labor

That’s it. Everything else is an imaginary quality from the developer. In most cases the well reasoned arguments from developers in favor of large frameworks can be performed faster without the frameworks, both in human writing speed and software execution speed. Typically these imaginary qualities taken a defensive tone from developers who have never learned to execute without the frameworks, which becomes an argument from ignorance because you know what you are arguing for but not what you are arguing against.

At any rate the result is the same that the article makes about AI: output of brittle toolchains.

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Okay. I've been developing software for 40 years now. Frameworks became a thing a little over 30 years ago. Industry productivity soared - so much so that that was our last big productivity boost in the industry.

There are a myriad of other benefits from using frameworks, so many in fact that to me it's a red flag when someone advocates against them.

With regards to AI, like I said in my original comment it's a tool, not a panacea. Experienced software tradesmen are learning how to effectively wield AI - hint: it's not for writing all your code. I'm kind of excited because we could be on the verge of another great productivity boost like we experienced 30 years ago when we adopted frameworks.

The biggest red flag I have against frameworks is that its a leaky abstraction that induces human insecurity. I have been doing this a very long time and it always comes up. Always. People cannot architect because they expect this to be a solved problem. People cannot execute outside what the framework provides, because they are deathly afraid of writing original code. People can't measure things because they have no reason to once they are locked into their framework conventions. Every decision point becomes a defensive game reasoned around the idea of "I can't*.

That is the primary reason I wanted to change employment from writing JavaScript to something else. If I could find JavaScript employment without this insanity then maybe I will reconsider my options. I see AI as more of the same.

I'll take a bite and be a defensive developer.

I really can't put frameworks in the same bucket as AI. At least frameworks describe an abstract model for a developer to rationalize and think through. AI allows (but doesn't mandate) a developer to write code that they don't understand.

Perhaps I've worked on business logic so long instead of esoteric efforts; what real world use case would benefit from not leveraging a framework where applicable?

In fact, I see your publicly posted resume; are there really developers out there rawdogging Javascript? What problem space do you hire for that mandates the ignorance of >15 years of JS libraries?

And does your business pays above market rate for these skilled developers? Without understanding the problem space I just assume your business tries to hire talented people at exploitative wages. Regardless it appears to be a staggering waste of talent unless the higher quality significantly reduces the cost center of downtime, bugs etc (I find this hard to believe)

> In fact, I see your publicly posted resume; are there really developers out there rawdogging Javascript? What problem space do you hire for that mandates the ignorance of >15 years of JS libraries?

Performance, security, and portability to start. If you work in a high security environment you should expect to NOT have access to things like Maven or NPM.

I hear so very many people on HN and the real world complain about web bloat. Even the people who contribute to that bloat and cannot live without the contributing factors complain about it. As somebody who is only writing personal software now and working in a completely unrelated field I certainly wouldn't punish myself with bloat that requires far more work than executing without it.

I mean maybe if you hear it a lot, there's a reason for that?

Frameworks may not bring magical perfection but they bring a lot of objective benefit to the table.

Yes, many developers cannot program.

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