From: Martin DeMello <martindemello@...>
Date: 2008-08-20T02:25:48+09:00
Subject: Re: when are web frameworks needed?

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 10:15 AM, Eleanor McHugh
<eleanor@games-with-brains.com> wrote:
> On 19 Aug 2008, at 17:27, Martin DeMello wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:07 PM, goodieboy <goodieBoy@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> As an example, I have a simple ecommerce site I need to develop. I'm
>>> thinking of using Passenger, DataMapper, ActiveMerchant and Erb. Would
>>> it be so terrible to whip up my own lightweight router and controller
>>> scheme for something like this? I can't imagine the code to support
>>> the app would be more than a few hundred lines?
>>
>> Mostly that it's a well-understood, rather routine problem that you're
>> solving again and again for little benefit. Why not just drop in
>> Sinatra or one of the other lightweight frameworks and take advantage
>> of the accumulated design and debugging effort.
>
> Just because other people have already solved a problem doesn't mean it's
> not worth solving again in a different matter. I spent a very enjoyable
> month in 2006 writing a small web framework, and whilst I could have used
> Rails or Camping to do the same job it would probably have taken me as long
> to bend them to my will :)

Yeah, if your problem is to write a web framework and you have a new
idea about it, that's one thing, but if you're just trying to get a
webapp up I daresay you're solving the same plumbing problems that the
existing frameworks have solved already.

martin