What can a framework do for me? What can't it do?

The following are from Wikipedia

"A framework is a basic conceptual structure used to solve a complex issue."

"A software framework is a re-usable design for a software system (or subsystem). A software framework may include support programs, code libraries, a scripting language, or other software to help develop and glue together the different components of a software project. Various parts of the framework may be exposed through an API."

First off, if your a good developer who has worked on a lot of projects its very likely you have worked with some sort of framework. Why is that? Because as you move on between projects you will find code usefull from the last project in your current one. You will slow put together a collection of scripts that help you do your job. In all basic sense this collection of scripts is a "Framework"

What does using a framework get you? It gets you 1 thing and only 1 thing.. Speedup in development (some might say you can learn from a framework but what are you really learning?).

Thats it, you heard me, all a framework can do for you is speed up development.

Its not a "1d10 golden rod of coding", its not going to solve all your problems for you, its not going to make your site faster and it won't get you a date with the other sex!

A framework is a tool, If you are not skilled with a hammer you can go out and buy the "Titanium quadro shock reducing laser balanced hammer" and your still not going to be skilled with a hammer!

Fact is most frameworks are extremely slow in what they do and it can be "A LOT FASTER", Why? Because the goal of a framework is not to please you, Its to please thousands of other people who want it to do everything under the sun. A lot of frameworks follow the 80/20 rule, If they question 100 people and 80 say feature X will be usefull it goes in.

What does that mean? If the average person votes yes on 80 percent of all questions and these votes are spread across 1000 features fairly evenly then there are 200 features in your framework that you voted against, Maybe you only use 10% of the framework so thats 20 features that went into pieces you use that you voted against and are right now slowing down every page load on your site!!!!! HOW DARE THEY!!!

What does this all come down to, one of the biggest problems a programmer may face, "Reuse or Recode" do you use one of the popular frameworks or do you go it on your own?

What ever you do don't ask me, I still haven't figured that question out 100% myself.