Libraries over Frameworks

What is the benefit of using a framework like Ruby-on-Rails, Pylons or Drupal?  Simply put, it helps us start and develop code from nothing quickly.   But it does not have long lasting staying power.   If you plan to be using the system for years to come – the advantage of the quick start up is out weighed by the restrictions placed upon you by the framework.

So often in my experience working on legacy systems in various industries the Framework itself becomes the enemy of quick bug fixes and feature enhancements.

I prefer to use libraries rather than using frameworks.  We all need libraries because we don’t want to reinvent everything like database connectivity, yaml parsing, json parsing, and interesting things like zipcode distance calculations, etc.

But frameworks are something we can write ourselves very easily.   The advantage of doing so is the ability to understand and have complete control over everything in the system, and only have those things we really need, and nothing else.

Lightweight “frameworks” like Cherrypy and Flask for python and Sinatra for ruby, which can be considered libraries for http-routing, rather than frameworks, are more elegant solutions than full fledged MVC frameworks.

 

 

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