lesscode.org

2 Responses to “The Ying and the Yang”

1. Simon Willison:

   What a fantastic essay. What he says about frameworks is certainly true - they always restrict you in some way. I suppose it comes down to a trade-off - does the productivity increase more than balance the loss of freedom? If not, then the framework isn’t worth having. I’ve certainly worked with (and even designed) frameworks like that in the past!

   comment at 17. July 2005

2. Dannno:

   I think the Lathe/Sander/Drill/etc etc comment was a little off.

   If the problem doesn’t fit a framework, it doesn’t fit a framework, go find the RIGHT framework where the problem will fit (if your boss says, “It’s gotta be done in this framework!”, visit great personal injurty upon him).

   A framework is more like buying a pie crust. The crust on a pie is always the hardest part, it’s gotta be thin enough so it doesn’t distract from the pie’s filling, but it has to be thick enough to hold the pie in when you cut a slice.

   When you buy the pie crust, you loose control of the texture of the crust and the flavor, but you gain the fact that you don’t have to bake that inexorably difficult part of the pie and can concentrate on the part that most people find more interesting, the filling.

   When you bake the pie from scratch, you have perfect control over the crust. You can make that crust cherry flavored if you’re good enough and you can make the crust turn a good piece of pie into a pie worth murdering a busload of preschoolers and chopping their bodies limb from limb for.

   Of course, most of the time, you just need a slice of pie, not an unholy artifact from another dimension that causes the downfall of the races of man.

   I think I lost my point. Where was I?

   Oh yeah, the tool metaphor wasn’t quite right.

   comment at 17. July 2005