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Comment by nsomaru | Hacker News Reader

I guess the best of both worlds for a beginner like myself is to find a framework (Django) that treats its parts as libraries (i.e. you can swap out any one part for another).

Granted, it's not completely seamless, but the option exists. Many Django programmers, for example, do not use the standard templating language available with Django.

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Sadly, Django is both highly interconnected and has less than clean design. So while you can swap one bit for another, you'll still depend on all of django, and the stranger will be obvious.

A lot of useful stuff in Django also lives in 3rd party apps that depend on Django-specific things e.g. authentication or templates.

I think that point is kinda conceded in the post. The problems arise when you get to some part of the framework that cannot be swapped out. In my experience, almost every project I've worked on has got to this point. The ones that didn't were small things that were basically 'done' in under 6 months. Software being 'done' tends to be a sign of a failing business, as you've run out of places to grow into, or things to optimise. That said, I've learned a lot from working with frameworks, and I would support your statement that frameworks are great for beginners.

Disclamer: I wrote the article, but didn't post it to hacker news

Could you provide some examples? It's interesting to know what problems others come up against when working with frameworks...

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