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Paul Jones:
Framework Tradeoffs For Beginners: Product Creation vs Program Maintenance
Jan 22, 2014 @ 17:53:42

Paul Jones has shared some of his thoughts about framework tradeoffs in his latest post. In it he compares two perspectives about framework use for beginners - either the "get something out there" product approach or focusing on the the long term maintenance of the product.

Phil Sturgeon at his blog, writing about product creators who neither know nor care much about programming as a discipline. [...] Phil’s post focuses on the joyful, proud moments of creation that lead to business success, whether in terms of venture funding or continued sales. In this essay, I want to focus on what happens after that, when that initial creation passes into other hands to be maintained.

Paul talks about how frameworks can allow developers to work "beyond their level" and be more productive than they could be otherwise. He points out that this can create a beginner-level codebase that works "just enough" and then is usually passed off to more experienced developers to update, change and flat out fix issues.

From a financial standpoint, and perhaps even from an economic standpoint, it’s easy to see enabling-via-framework as a positive. Indeed, the product creator may justify his failures of good programming practice by substituting the product popularity and continued rounds of funding as a marker of success. [...] But from a programming practices standpoint, enabling-by-framework too often leads to pain and frustration on the part of the maintenance programmers, who are now saddled with the baggage of an amateur.
tagged: framework tradeoff beginner product creation maintenance

Link: http://paul-m-jones.com/archives/5890


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