The never ending saga of “Pure” Web vs Frameworks
Web is an abstraction for delivering something to users. The elements of this abstraction are JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
Web purists are in love with these abstraction elements. We don’t like to use any more abstractions other than these. Problems are solved in our own custom way that lives within the scope of our applications or may be applications that we will develop. It could be a way how files are structured or how data is managed or how UI is styled or UI is updated with the data. It is our own little framework. Maybe it has a cool name or nothing at all. Probably we don’t want to or have time to invest in learning a framework. There is nothing wrong about it. A new framework might come next day. But the web is also evolving. JavaScript specs are also changing. Hence “pure” web solutions will also need to evolve.
Framework fanatics will use their favourite framework for application development. A web framework provides a certain set of abstractions on top of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The reasons for these abstractions can be many depending on the problems the framework intends to solve and the way it solves. The reasons for choosing a framework could be many. Probably abstractions that a framework provides (over basic web abstractions) improves productivity, may be it enables to deliver value to their customers faster, may be it helps to reduce some common problems that is easy to see if this framework was not used, may be there are many eyes looking at solutions, may be there is a good community of people using and providing support, may be it is the most popular framework, may be it was dictated by our organisation, may be we researched different frameworks and picked one for a set of trade offs that was required for that particular application. New frameworks keep coming. Existing frameworks also evolve. It is practically impossible to learn all of them. And it is ok to just learn when it is needed.
Irrespective of whether a framework is used or not, there is no one winner. Either of these solutions will not guarantee future proofing because problems are changing and it is scaling up. Accordingly solutions are also evolving. Be it pure web or frameworks, will also keep evolving. The only future proof solution is the “people” solving problems.
Tomorrows web is not the same as todays web and todays web is not the same as yesterdays web.
