> I really don't get what people mean when they say they're against frameworks. Your app that you're making with no framework...how are things structured? Do you just repeat yourself everywhere?
So, there are frameworks and there are libraries. With a framework, you use the structure provided by the framework, and hook pieces of your code into it; with a library, you structure your code to your problem, and use libraries to provide functionality.
Frameworks are generally easier to get started with: they provide a lot, and their pieces generally work well together. But inevitably, the day will come when you need to do something not envisioned by your framework, and then you're stuck: it can be arbitrarily difficult, painful and/or low-performance to do what you need. That last point is also worth mentioning: because a framework tries to be good at providing the same structure for a lot of different problems, it inevitably is a jack of all trades and a master of none. This can end up meaning poor performance, due to needing to call lots of functions to do simple things (imagine some hellacious Java framework with AbstractFactoryVisitorSingletons), or it can be a pain on the programmer, or both.
Meanwhile, libraries are just that…libraries of code that the programmer can use to implement needed functionality. How he stitches them together is up to him.
With a framework, your code lives within someone else's structure; using libraries, other people's code is called by yours.
So, there are frameworks and there are libraries. With a framework, you use the structure provided by the framework, and hook pieces of your code into it; with a library, you structure your code to your problem, and use libraries to provide functionality.
Frameworks are generally easier to get started with: they provide a lot, and their pieces generally work well together. But inevitably, the day will come when you need to do something not envisioned by your framework, and then you're stuck: it can be arbitrarily difficult, painful and/or low-performance to do what you need. That last point is also worth mentioning: because a framework tries to be good at providing the same structure for a lot of different problems, it inevitably is a jack of all trades and a master of none. This can end up meaning poor performance, due to needing to call lots of functions to do simple things (imagine some hellacious Java framework with AbstractFactoryVisitorSingletons), or it can be a pain on the programmer, or both.
Meanwhile, libraries are just that…libraries of code that the programmer can use to implement needed functionality. How he stitches them together is up to him.
With a framework, your code lives within someone else's structure; using libraries, other people's code is called by yours.
'How are things structured?' However you want!
Read http://tom.lokhorst.eu/2010/09/why-libraries-are-better-than... for more, and http://www.evanjones.ca/frameworks-necessary-for-large-scale... for an opposing view.