[yeahbutbut]

I agree with the sentiment that the framework "disease" has gotten a little out of hand (it seems like we have a new one every few weeks now...). However, these same people would come up with a dozen ways of routing URLs to handler functions if they weren't given some sort of standard solution to use.

Basically, frameworks are a way to work on a team without everyone reinventing solutions to problems that are almost beneath notice when trying to get dynamic content on the web.

The reason we don't have single CGI scripts for each url, and instead route everything through a single bootup script is to centralize things like session management, database initialization, memcache, configuration... etc. Things that you could do on every page, but that would be too cumbersome, repetitive, and generally don't change often.

When working with django, or zend, or cake, or whatever the framework of the day is I've often just wanted to go back to the simplicity of plain WSGI. But then I see the mess that people still make when everything is done for them and realize that would just create a new hell.

It takes discipline to program at a lower level, and understanding. Both of those qualities are in short supply.

[mattgreenrocks]

> It takes discipline to program at a lower level, and understanding.

Why don't we train developers for this instead of constantly telling them they need to learn flash-in-the-pan-framework.js?

[Illotus]

Well, because when you want to get stuff done you really don't want to invent the wheel again. Why not reuse the work someone else has done before?

This is not to say that understanding web at a low level isn't useful, it certainly is. However, in my opinion it is better to for example build a simple mvc framework as learning experience and use something battle tested in production.

[mattgreenrocks]

Reuse is good. But my fear is that people learn the intricacies of Rails over SOLID Ruby. The basics are worth practicing over and over again -- the benefits accumulate much like compound interest. Whereas there's no guarantee of Rails being around in ten years.

There's a certain sort of intellectual deference that is given to these frameworks (much of it has to do with how readily people accept things said by famous/rich people). For example, is MVC really the best way to write traditional webapps?

We need more iconoclasts.