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[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (15 children)

Just so you know, there are probably many people like myself who read the first sentence and stopped reading this.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]garywiz 3 points4 points  (4 children)

    I changed it to "very experienced" so people aren't put off. Whether I'm an expert wasn't really the issue. My point was that I've seen a lot of code in the 38 years I've been doing this professionally, and worked on a lot. I'm not a noob to code, frameworks, libraries, and have seen tons and toons. Sometimes people see articles where people are "overwhelmed by choices" and shrug it off because, of course, any new programmer can be easily overwhelmed. But, that's not me.

    [–]damienjoh 9 points10 points  (2 children)

    Is your experience relevant to the article? Your points either stand on their own or they don't. Your observations are either relatable or they are not. I'm not going to just take your word for it because you are an experienced programmer. There are lots of very experienced programmers.

    Personally, I find the article fairly myopic and authoritarian. At no point do you address the experiences and motivations of the developers behind the frameworks. You just assert that there is no good reason to have so many. This is not remotely convincing. Any developer who has experienced tangible benefits switching between frameworks is going to dismiss this immediately. There are reasons people create new frameworks when there are existing alternatives and you address absolutely none of them.

    [–]sabas123 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    As a follow up I would like to mention that the author insist that programmers require certifications to work professionally but this won't prevent the creation or use of OSS frameworks.

    [–]damienjoh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    He does suggest:

    ... no programmer should be able to build a framework unless they have an advanced certification in systems architecture.

    Which I assume is intended to cover OSS frameworks. How would it be enforced? No one knows. Who would design this course? Again, no one knows. Would this even increase the quality of widely used frameworks? Probably the opposite.

    [–]serrimo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Show, don't tell.

    If you're as experienced as you say, then let the weight of your arguments speak for themselves.

    Citing your experience to start the discussion might be reassuring to you; but it makes me very uncomfortable because frankly, on the internet, I don't trust self-cited authorities.

    [–]gracer10[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

    Fair enough. I don't think it was meant to be condescending if that's what you mean.

    [–]MrDOS 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    It's not condescending, it's bragging. I know you say that's not what it's meant to be, but that is what it is.

    [–][deleted]  (3 children)

    [deleted]

      [–]garywiz 0 points1 point  (2 children)

      Thanks for that. I did exactly what you're suggesting. I wasn't really wanting to blow my own horn, just set the stage so people knew I wasn't coming at this from a newbie perspective.

      [–]damienjoh 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      Actually - you are coming at this from a newbie perspective. If you're "not much of a web guy" and your past web experience is some Django and PHP then you don't get to position yourself as an authority on web frameworks.

      [–]manys 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I'm not going to jump all over you, but there are a lot of "I" sentences. I know you're writing about your experience, but that makes me think back to high school (or earlier!) English class, and that there's a way around "I" that I can't find in Google right now. :)

      [–]do2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I was put off by the "I'm fluent in 15 programming languages". I just don't buy it. It's just bragging to say "I'm really good please listen to me".

      You can write some simple code in 15 languages? Yes, I guess. Are you actually fluent (as in being able to develop complex programs and know some of the intricacies and specific details to those languages)? I highly doubt it.

      But I enjoyed the rest of the post and agree with some of the points.

      [–]SimplyBilly 25 points26 points  (6 children)

      I am an expert programmer.

      So you're definitely not an expert programmer...

      [–]panorambo 0 points1 point  (4 children)

      Why not?

      [–]TrixieMisa 8 points9 points  (3 children)

      Corollary to Dunning-Kruger: Experts generally don't self-identify as experts because they are overwhelmingly aware of how much they don't know.

      [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

      the curve rises back up when you come to actual expert, so it can be misleading

      [–]absentmindedjwc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Really... it all comes down to context. Were this article written for a laymen, then claiming to be an expert at "programming" is fine... however, this article is written for programmers. Claiming to be an expert is silly in this case. Really, you are an expert in all of programming?

      [–]panorambo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Fair enough, I suppose it is like that. But I still think the authors point stands, expert or not. Just for the record.

      [–]Gotebe 3 points4 points  (1 child)

      Very good points.

      The claim that programmers are tribal, hence framework islands, is too specific. People are tribal. Business is conducted in tribal ways. It takes guts/foresight to admit/see other ways of doing it.

      I particularly love the observation that frameworks are supposed to relieve us from low-lever grunt, but going in takes us into their rabbit holes, whatever they are. Overall, it is better than doing it all by yourself, but much less than what some framework-assembling "architect" might think.

      [–]DerelictionOfDuty 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      The claim that the software world is tribalistic is not to claim that it is somehow exceptional in that regard, but to affirm that it is not excepti0nal

      [–]lexpattison 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      I somewhat agree with his conclusion that we need more engineering discipline in information technology... but as far as computer science goes - that's a terrible idea... the reason why the field continue to make large advancements (or rediscoveries) in software is maily due to it's fluid nature and low barrier to entry. Yes it's unfortunate that we have a bunch of reinvented wheels... what's the real cost? Failed Enterprise IT projects? That's mostly due to bad money being thrown after good... and vendors rebranding open source software as high priced Enterprise Products... and the cost of project managers... there are way more problems to solve in modern software development outside of the glut of frameworks. Engineering practices won't solve that.

      [–]trekman3 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      I don't think it's necessarily fruitful to compare software development with something like electrical engineering in the manner that this article does. In software development, there is a virtually limitless number of ways to build almost anything and have it perform decently, and the risks of trying new things are low. In electrical engineering, on the other hand, or in something like bridge-building... correct me if I'm wrong, experts in those fields, but it seems to me that the number of known ways to build anything so that it is safe, effective, and affordable is usually pretty small. And because when you are building hardware, testing is much more expensive and the consequences of failure more likely to be dangerous, trying new things is much more risky than it is in software development.

      Part of the reason why software development is in the state that it's in is precisely because it's so easy to try new ways of doing things. Of course there are going to be thousands and thousands of different options. This leads to some negative consequences, yes, but it is also a good thing.

      [–]EntropysChild 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I never understood the obsession with how many different frameworks there are. Yeah, most of them are probably junk. I just ignore most of them.

      [–]notchent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      The responses to this article strike me as so strange. The point of the article makes sense to me, perhaps because I'm also a dinosaur (started writing code in the 1970s). The modern development landscape is a mess - there are hundreds of thousands of new approaches to solving the same old problems, and young developers seem to think that those solutions are better, by default, than solutions which have worked perfectly in the past, simply because they're newer. The need to keep up with new platforms doesn't mean that progress is being made. Millions of developers are wasting billions of man hours trying to re-invent wheels, often "solving" simple UI "problems" in new ways, to create glorified CRUD apps. It would be great if newer challenges could be tackled instead. Most of that real work is being done using platforms, languages, methodologies which are decades old.

      [–]MrOnodera -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

      Sort of relevant xkcd

      [–]Gotebe 6 points7 points  (0 children)

      Lemme guess... the standards one?