Why I Hate Frameworks (2005)
The hammer analogy breaks down from the get-go for me. The main distinguishing factor between a framework and a library is the classic &quot;you call a library, but a framework calls you.&quot;<p>A better (but still imperfect) analogy might be buying a timber frame (with plan) versus home-rolling a stick frame from the ground up. With the planned timber frame house, the rough layout of the rooms and plumbing and such is somewhat predetermined, and as such it &quot;calls you&quot; in the sense that you&#x27;re building out the amenities, but with the ground-up stick frame, you&#x27;re explicitly making all the framing decisions too.<p>Like all things, there are bad frameworks, but scoped appropriately (simply) they can be incredibly useful. Just like houses, it turns out there are many ways in which web services are similar to each other and can benefit from a common framing.