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Put that way, I fully agree. If I were to hire programmers for my company, I'd rather have a few like yourself than a bunch of Rails devs that don't really know Ruby nor Rails' internals (for example). And I've worked at a bunch of places where the effects of using frameworks without fully understanding them were readily apparent.

I took issue mostly with the blanket statement that frameworks are bad, because I think there's a lot of variety. Backbone, for example, is so basic that it might be useful for 'master' programmers, whereas Rails is a monster framework that is a bitch to handle if you get to that 10%. And I'd argue React, which is more of a library, could be a very useful abstraction that leaves you free to do things your own way, or even replace it eventually. But I might be wrong about that! I'm not a master...

Also, I guess in the context of the framework/library-explosion it makes sense that you'd point out the problems with a little less nuance :). And it's a good reminder for me as a young framework-raised, self-taught whipper-snapper to make sure I become a master at my 'craft'.

And not just because it pays better.

So if i may ask, what do you use?

Just raw DOM manipulations?

I feel like your argument is partially valid, but your argument also sounds like it effectively argues for pure Assembly. Anything ontop of that costs you a ton at the 10% mark. Now, i understand there's a difference between a Framework and a Language, but i hope you can understand my point.

I feel like you're going to one extreme, and arguing against another. Arguing opinionated frameworks with equal opinionated design seems odd to me.

Lastly, what are your thoughts on code maintenance? I feel like there is something to be said for "Get it done" thinking and "Make it maintainable", and sometimes they don't see eye-to-eye.

If it's cleanly written, with a framework that makes sense, isn't it far easier to maintain than raw JS? (Not specifically about React, just in general)

Disclaimer: I like React quite a bit. But i don't think you're "wrong", we just see things differently.

I prefer libraries. I'm partial to jQuery[1] for DOM manipulation, simple effects, and AJAX. I love Underscore. Both libraries allow me to pick and choose which parts of them I can use without imposing on me to do it The $FrameworkName Way. That said, when I can use pure JS I do.

    Lastly, what are your thoughts on code maintenance? I feel like there is something to be said for "Get it done" thinking and "Make it maintainable", and sometimes they don't see eye-to-eye.

You're right, they don't always see eye-to-eye. Frameworks are handy if you need to "get it done". You also need to educate your customer that you will have to make trade-offs and cut corners when trying to just "get it done". But I also argue that with enough experience you can, in fact, get it done and make it maintainable. I've seen that time and again.

The reason I don't believe you can write something cleanly with a framework and it be easier to maintain is that the framework is a black box of unknowns. So one option, as someone else has mentioned, is to try to fully understand that black box. But then you've just tied yourself to that framework. Wouldn't you be better served mastering the technology that the framework is written in?

1: jQuery proper. jQueryUI isn't too bad but is still a little more black box than I prefer. I really dislike jQuery Mobile for all the reasons I dislike frameworks.

The biggest problem I've found is that while theoretically frameworks should be easier to maintain (and if used right, they might be), in practice using frameworks are an excuse for developers to do something quickly, The <Framework> Way be damned.

The result of all this is code that is harder to maintain, even for those who know how to use said framework.

While I'm not against frameworks myself (in fact I argued in favor of them in this very conversation), I have become much more weary of them. In fact, after a brief affair with CoffeeScript I've even come to be more hesitant about using that or other 'transpilers', as I recently ran into the problem where I had to revert to plain js and I discovered that I'd lost some proficiency.

That said, it depends partly on the developers, and partly on the amount of structure the framework forces you into.

And that said, I suspect using a framework often serves more to alleviate managers' concern about maintainability than anything else.

There's one case where I would strongly suggest someone use a framework though, especially an opinionated one such as Rails. By following the Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, I learned a lot about best practices that I wouldn't have learned had I cobbled together a bunch of libraries. So for beginning developers, a framework might help them get started with their prototypes and whatnot.

Then again, maybe that worked for me because I can't help but want to look behind the curtain... I've certainly met my share of developers who never seen to wonder what's behind the magic.

Thanks for the additional insight, appreciated :)

That's a terrible argument my dude. Do me a solid, what do ya'lls variable names look like right now? Or just real quick, LOC on the smallest file you got.

What kind of useful metric could variable names and lines of code possibly provide?

Frameworks decrease LOC, which drastically improve readability. Any shorthand variables decrease readability. Frameworks are great at enforcing these rules.

If your average LOC is ever more than 200 lines or so, you've got a messy app.

The trouble is that many devs can't see past that 80% to see the 20% that's left. They whip up a little app at night, it works really nicely and they assume this means the app they're working on during the day should be "rewritten" in the framework-du-jour. Then they hit that 20% "wall", blame the framework as "lame" and start hunting for an alternative. Rinse and repeat.

Last year I got excited about NodeJS and started working with it quite heavily. Then I started to see holes - difficult debugging, so-so tooling for development, mixed bag of JS components, and so on. I then stepped back and realized that although it was interesting, and I can see it useful for some specialized server-side development, I don't see it as compellingly different than current alternatives (Rails, .NET, PHP, etc) to try to build a whole web app with it.

To extend your argument, I would state that frameworks are only about speeding up the initial creation of an application that fits into a narrow set of assumptions. Frameworks, by their very nature, capture a set of decisions by their designers about how an app should work (or behave). As long as your app fits nicely into this box and you can live with the downstream risk that maybe it won't one day, then go for it.

I agree with the clarification that there are differences between Rails, .NET, PHP, and NodeJS. Rails & .NET are frameworks (strictly speaking, .NET is an amalgamation of frameworks and languages). PHP and NodeJS are languages.