[Web 2.0] Added-value of frameworks?

[J Kenneth King]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bdesth.quelquechose at free.quelquepart.fr> writes:

> Gilles Ganault a écrit :
>> Hello
>>
>> If I wanted to build some social web site such as Facebook, what do
>> frameworks like Django or TurboGears provide over writing a site from
>> scratch using Python?
>
> Quite a lot of abstractions and factorisation of the boilerplate code,
> a known way to organize your application, and possibly a good
> integration of the usual components (and wrt/ Django, a customizable
> yet fairly usable OOTB admin interface). For simple to mediumly
> complex applications, this can mean more than 80% of the grunt
> work. The counterpart is mostly learning and understanding the
> framework, which means you may not save that much time on a first
> project - but it can really pay off then. One of my coworker started
> this morning a (really simple...) project which acceptance tests are
> to begin on monday, and we are all quite confident he'll deliver on
> time, thanks to Django.

Well the big negative is when you application design starts expanding
past the framework design. A percolator makes a decent cup of coffee but
it really isn't meant for making fancy lattes. This is where the 90/10
rule will catch you if you're not careful.

"90% of the effort will be spent on the last 10% of the work."