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Comment by linza | Hacker News Reader

You didn't specify what you meant with "more productive", but if it means "being able to produce more code in less amount of time" then i agree that one can be faster with frameworks/Java.

If you look at the problem more holistically (say "run a reliable service customers want to use") then that metric is just one of many, and more often than not counterproductive vs some other metrics like maintainability and resilience for instance. IME frameworks reflect that and only let you write code fast, or get the hello-world-demo out fast, but neglect the later stages.

I don't know if the conclusion is no framework is better overall, but the frameworks i worked with at least showed mixed results overall.

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We're not going to settle this today but I think the later stages are where frameworks shine.

For instance, when Oauth became popular I was maintaining several apps where the original authors had never dreamed of an alternative login method (email and password had been the norm for longer than any of us had worked as developers).

The Rails apps required a few small config changes which I could get from the documentation then HTML for the "Login with Facebook" button.

The framework-less apps were disasters. Each had their own way of doing things. Some used libraries that were no longer maintained, others had rolled their own authentication workflow or half copied the code from another project.

There is a lot to be said for frameworks when facing an unpredictable future. There is a cost to be paid up front as far as learning the framework but the benefits on the back end are enormous.

> The Rails apps required a few small config changes which I could get from the documentation

What Rails configuration would be pertinent to Oauth? Perhaps you mean the application was already using some kind of third-party authentication library (e.g. Devise) that supported Oauth? If that's the case, didn't you just luck out that the developers happened to choose a library that 1. Was still being maintained. 2. Had already added Oauth support?

Most of the Rails apps I have encountered in my career (especially those predating Oauth popularity) used hand-rolled authentication, each different to the next, so it seems that you could have just as easily fell into the same trap you saw elsewhere. It is not clear how Rails saved you here.

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