JavaScript Frameworks
November 18, 2015This post was inspired by a tweet I saw the other day.
Frameworks make things more convenient for developers, but pass the inconvenience on to end users https://t.co/tA3W8bgreE
— Aaron Gustafson (@AaronGustafson) November 17, 2015
It’s basic message makes sense. Frameworks will not be as fast as light, application-specific custom code.
Yet, most applications aren’t to-do apps. Most applications have release dates and timelines and milestones and a business that relies on them to get things done quickly.
When creating an application, you’re ultimately balancing a few ideals:
- User experience
- Development time
- Development effort
- Business requirements
Going all the way down the path of any of those ideals will end in failure. While everyone wants to be user-centric, you also need to ship the product. And it likely needs to be a product that makes money.
If it was truly user-centric, the product would be free and you wouldn’t sell ads. That’s not to mention that you wouldn’t sell user data.
If it optimized around development time, you’d do the fastest thing possible. That means cutting corners everywhere else. No one wants that – not users, the business, nor future developers.
Development effort is different from development time. Nine women can’t have a baby in one month. Adding more developers or taking them away changes the project. It changes the resources required as well as the timeline. That’s besides how paying them affects the business aspect of things.
And finally, let’s consider business requirements. When you’re building something, it’s usually to make some kind of profit or get exposure. In the simplest sense, it’s to get people to do something they wouldn’t have otherwise.
While it’s fun to have a favorite framework or just to rag on all of them, they’re a balance between the above ideals. They decrease development time. They often increase user experience with pre-baked controls or common UX practices. They usually mean fewer developers. They make it easier to fulfill the business requirements.
Throwing frameworks out the window because start-up time for trivial cases take longer means we’re focusing on one ideal and not seeing the bigger picture. It’s an interesting counterpoint, for sure. But in today’s world of snap judgements, we’re not seeing the forest for the trees.
