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Discussion on: You Probably Don't Need A Front End Framework

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Dwayne Charrington

I mostly always tend to reach for a front-end framework and my choice is Aurelia. The things that I get in a framework are invaluable to me and save a lot of time.

You can go vanilla, but in the end you end up just creating your own framework piecemeal by installing a trove of Node packages. You install a router, something for templating and a a few other libraries. I often start off with the intent of not using a framework, but the time saving of not having to reinvent the wheel are hard to argue against.

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Brian Barbour

Right. I wouldn't write my own FE framework, rather I'd just refactor what I have to use one... if my project grows to need it. For now its just overhead and complexity that it doesn't need.

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Dwayne Charrington

If you're building simple things that don't need many packages or functionality, that's absolutely the way to go. If you're building a LOB application or something that's laden with features, it's hard to argue the case against a framework if it can save you tens and hundreds of hours in work.

I do think people lean on existing frameworks and libraries a lot, but the concern for me is they're not bothering to learn basic JavaScript fundamentals or their perspective of what native browser API's can actually do versus what frameworks allow you to is skewed.