As a developer here at DealTaker, I’m constantly keeping my eye out for the newest trends, better methodologies and new thoughts in web development. I’ve seen many come and go. One thing that I have seen come and stake it’s ground in the web development sector is frameworks.

Whether you are a front end developer doing (X)HTML, CSS or JS; a back end developer using PHP, PERL, Ruby or one of the many other back end programming/scripting language, you most likely have heard the term “Framework”. Well I’m here to explain what a framework is and the pro’s and con’s of them.

So what is a framework? A framework can be defined as a group of generic snippets of code that are tied together with a “ready to run” core system. It’s usually the core that really makes a framework a framework. With out the core, you would just have a library code snippets. To better visualize this, think of the code snippets as 2×4′s and the core as a nail gun. The core (nail gun) allows us to put our code (2×4′s) together quickly to produce something useful (house frame) in a short amount of time and also in a “standardized” way.

With any technique, whether it’s used to create a house or website, advantages and disadvantages are present. Let’s go over the disadvantages first.

1. Selection: Depending on which language you are developing in, there can be 100′s if not thousands of frameworks to choose from. This can make a daunting task of weeding through them to find the best match for the project.
2. Learning Curve: Some frameworks are simple and small and some are large and complex. Some even can change the way you parse your code, your naming conventions and some can even make it seem like you are developing in a new language.

And now for the advantages.

1. Selection: Lots to choose from! OK, it’s both an advantage and disadvantage.
2. Code standardization: Typically frameworks will follow some sort of “standardization” of how it was coded. This will help everyone on your team be on the same page.
3. Documentation: Any decent framework will be well documented. Both user and code docs. This will help in cutting development and debugging time down.
4. Extra tools: Debugging can be a pain in the butt, but with frameworks, usually tools for error logging have been added. This will definitely speed up fixing bugs.
5. Speed: Typically a framework can help you reduce the time to create a system, because it will have the essentials pre-made for you!

While the number of advantages is greater than the disadvantages, the disadvantages can be more heavily weighted for a lot of developers.

Here’s a list of lists of frameworks out there:

CSS: http://speckyboy.com/2008/03/28/top-12-css-frameworks-and-how-to-understand-them/

PHP: http://www.phpframeworks.com/

PERL: http://perl.net.au/wiki/Perl_frameworks

RUBY: http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2008/04/14/ruby-web-frameworks/