found drama

Why I Don’t Want Your JavaScript Framework but I Love You:

A very worthwhile read from Keith Rosenberg.

If there’s a tl;dr then it’s this: choose when to use a framework, not which framework — if you choose any framework at all, and/but/so when you do: take the time to get to know the source code, not just the docs.

Rosenberg has lots of good points in here, and while no single pithy quote jumped out as pull-worthy, it’s worth noting that he doesn’t simply dump on frameworks (as some do) but rather tries to ask the more interesting meta-question re: why are you even choosing to use one at all?

Obviously there are plenty of reasons to use a framework. There’s that old adage about either spending your time learning the framework or spending your time building all the home-brew infrastructure that turns in to your own personal framework. What Rosenberg points out though is that if you’re not digging deep into the source, then you’re not really learning, and you wind up in a bad place anyway — surrounded by all the framework magic that’s undocumented and you don’t understand, can’t debug, and spend days trying to work around, over, under, or through.

(Having been guilty of the above, and having been there myself, I cannot stress that enough.)

As he says: take the time to think about your problems and spend some time designing your application and discovering what you really need, instead of just diving in with your AngularJS life-jacket because that worked out so well on that last thing your build.

(Previously/related: RE: Developers are calling it quits on polyglot programming.)