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Comment by rickmb | Hacker News Reader

No, sir. That is a framework you may not be familiar with.

There are frameworks specifically designed to be modular, and of which 90% can be used as a library, without being forced to apply it's MVC or scaffolding bits.

The line between framework an library is a blurry one in a world where "framework" does not equal "Rails".

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Framework: it calls you.

Library: you call it.

Well put.

BenjiSmith puts it similarly in a comment halfway down:

  A library is something *contained* within my code.

  A framework is a *container* for my application.

That distinction only has meaning when passing functions around is hard. Nobody call simple chart generating library's frameworks even if they have large numbers of call backs to your code. At the same time it's easy to find actual web frameworks that are instantiated by your code which may spawn unrelated processes at the same time.

I commented on that elsewhere. It's more like a continuum. Many libraries will offer callbacks and some are just based around callbacks. Some frameworks need to be called too. For example, IoC frameworks in Java often needs to be called/initialized/configured first (and then they do their magic).

Frameworks adhere to the Greyhound principle: Leave the driving to us. And to the Hollywood principle: Don't call us, we'll call you.

Someone once wanted to know what inversion of control was. I told them that inversion of control simply meant in Soviet Russia, API calls YOU!

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