I agree with the sentiment that the framework "disease" has gotten a little out of hand (it seems like we have a new one every few weeks now...). However, these same people would come up with a dozen ways of routing URLs to handler functions if they weren't given some sort of standard solution to use.

Basically, frameworks are a way to work on a team without everyone reinventing solutions to problems that are almost beneath notice when trying to get dynamic content on the web.

The reason we don't have single CGI scripts for each url, and instead route everything through a single bootup script is to centralize things like session management, database initialization, memcache, configuration... etc. Things that you could do on every page, but that would be too cumbersome, repetitive, and generally don't change often.

When working with django, or zend, or cake, or whatever the framework of the day is I've often just wanted to go back to the simplicity of plain WSGI. But then I see the mess that people still make when everything is done for them and realize that would just create a new hell.

It takes discipline to program at a lower level, and understanding. Both of those qualities are in short supply.