More ideas for framework people

A few months ago I wrote about Framework and Library people. I had great follow-up conversations with Ben Hamill, Brad Fults, and Nathan Ladd about it. Some ideas from those conversations:

  • use a well-worn framework when it addresses your technical complexities (e.g. expose functionality via the web or build a 3-d game) and your domain complexity (e.g. shopping, social networking, or multi-dimensional bowling) is your paramount concern

  • once you have some time/experience in your problem domain, start rounding off corners to leave future teammates a metaframework that reduces decision/design burdens and gives them some kind of golden path

  • frameworks may end up less useful as integration surface area increases

  • napkin math makes it hard to justify not using a framework; you have to build the thing and accept the cost of not having a community to support you and hire from

  • to paraphrase Sandi Metz on the wrong abstraction: “(Using) no abstraction is better than the wrong abstraction”; if you’ve had a bad time with a framework, chances it was an inappropriate abstraction or you used the abstraction incorrectly

Adam Keys @therealadam