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by spookthesunset 2378 days ago
> native JS works just fine for most simple interactions like startup apps

Oh god please don't. I worked with a startup whose "lead" (i.e. the person with the most seniority, not the smartest) insisted the whole front-end could be done with plain JS ("angular, jquery, etc... just useless bloat!!!" said the lead developer). What resulted was the biggest rats-nest soup of untraceable mess I've seen in a while. The only person on the team who understood the system was the "lead" developer. Changes took forever. Bug count was through the roof.

When you say "you don't need a framework", what you are really saying is "I'll build my own framework". Because you will be building a framework. And trust me, your framework will not be as good as what is on the market. And when you leave, all developers who didn't leave the company will rip all your shit out and replace it with a "real" framework -- all while cursing your name under their breath.

Your job at a startup is to get product-market fit. Not invent your own framework.

1 comments

Plenty of people create rats nests using frameworks, too. Would forcing the “most senior but not the smartest” person to use a framework they don’t like really have fixed your problems?
A framework at least encourages a coherent pattern.
Even non-framework people make frameworks. Just implicitly. At least a marginally good “real” one probably had somebody think hard about it and a great one has a community around it with plenty of devs that can jump right in on your project. All of them will have better documentation and you can get questions answered on stackoverflow. No such luck with the ivory tower anti-framework bozo’s pet framework.

God I’ve worked for too many startups where some “anti-framework” bozo declared frameworks as unneeded bloat.

Avoid these startups at all cost cause whoever hired the anti framework bozo is also a bozo and whoever hired that bozo is also a bozo. Fish rots from the top.

Not a good look for a startup with more important things to do than pushing far-out technology agendas.