We are privileged to create technology products and services that make a meaningful difference and impact in our client's businesses and the world around them.
The best frameworks sit in the background without being noticed. They provide services that are lightweight, robust, and best of all, take away mundane tasks from the user. It's less of a question of why we should use a framework and more an understanding of how best to implement one.
There are 3 core elements to any common framework:
For a framework to last, it needs some key elements: It should be easy to extend and override, easy to implement and understand and lastly, should not limit the developer. The developer's role should be more than just connecting to a database, constructing and manage a service or communicating data to a View. Pure and simply put, a developer's deeper job is to understand and meet the client's requirements as accurately, efficiently and sustainably as possible. Let the framework do the legwork and concentrate on completing the job at hand, which is to help the client succeed.
The most common argument against a framework is that it comes with heavy overhead. While bloated frameworks exist and should be avoided, many more have little overhead at all. The flaw usually is in the implementation of the framework. A solid framework will allow you to disable or better yet, not even implement functionality you don't need. What's important is to do your homework and chose the right framework for the client's needs.
The other common argument is that frameworks come with an expensive and time consuming learning curve. Again, many frameworks are bloated and hard to work with. Successful frameworks simply build off of what a developer knows already. A harvested framework is the preferred option, since it will simply help implement what a developer would have implemented anyway. As a result, the framework becomes more an extension of the developer instead of a new development language in itself.
As more team members learn the framework, our ability to ramp up resources and maintain the client's codebase increases in turn. The benefits compound - Future projects also gain from the team accrued knowledge of the framework and codebase, reducing development time with every iteration.
Lixar is part of the larger development community that promotes using standard frameworks. If we take away the mundane tasks, we are freed up to accomplish some extraordinary things! And it's the extraordinary that sets us apart.