Howdy folks,

This is not meant to be a rant but I just thought it would be nice to point out this pitfall so that both inexperienced, as well as upcoming developers, can get a heads up. Time and time again I come across programmers who are "framework-infected". That is their knowledge of a particular language is centered around a framework such as Django, Ruby on Rails, React, Symfony, etc. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with having good knowledge of a specific framework, (after all, you would need this knowledge to land a job most times). But the danger for framework-infected programmers is that they attempt to learn a programming language through one of the popular frameworks for that language and I believe this to be a dangerous mistake.

For example, I have come across programmers that know Jquery but don't really know JavaScript. Take Jquery away from them and they struggle to produce anything worthwhile in JavaScript. I think this trend of attempting to learn a programming language through a popular framework is motivated by the fact that people want to get productive very quickly and probably land a job in the shortest possible time. While this might pay off in the short term, it is however not sustainable. Framework-infected programmers are generally not very well grounded in the programming language of their adopted framework as their knowledge of the language is at best framework-centric.

If you are an upcoming programmer, my advice is not to worry about any framework and focus on learning your language of choice properly(i.e both syntax and semantics) after which learning any framework based on your language of choice will be a breeze. After all, Django is still Python, Rails is still Ruby, Symfony is still PHP.

Happy Coding!

Spot on!

Most people are NOT grounded in basics, coupled with the fact that the Country Education System is in regression.
Over 70% of CS students can hardly explain correctly what hibernation does, let alone write programs. Programming should be a stroll in the park for these ppl, but here we are.

It's just gonna be like this until the Industry brings in a major change, that I don't see happening yet. Nothing disruptive, just below average.

harryobas:
Howdy folks,

This is not meant to be a rant but I just thought it would be nice to point out this pitfall so that both inexperienced, as well as upcoming developers, can get a heads up. Time and time again I come across programmers who are "framework-infected". That is their knowledge of a particular language is centered around a framework such as Django, Ruby on Rails, React, Symfony, etc. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with having good knowledge of a specific framework, (after all, you would need this knowledge to land a job most times). But the danger for framework-infected programmers is that they attempt to learn a programming language through one of the popular frameworks for that language and I believe this to be a dangerous mistake.

For example, I have come across programmers that know Jquery but don't really know JavaScript. Take Jquery away from them and they struggle to produce anything worthwhile in JavaScript. I think this trend of attempting to learn a programming language through a popular framework is motivated by the fact that people want to get productive very quickly and probably land a job in the shortest possible time. While this might pay off in the short term, it is however not sustainable. Framework-infected programmers are generally not very well grounded in the programming language of their adopted framework as their knowledge of the language is at best framework-centric.

If you are an upcoming programmer, my advice is not to worry about any framework and focus on learning your language of choice properly(i.e both syntax and semantics) after which learning any framework based on your language of choice will be a breeze. After all, Django is still Python, Rails is still Ruby, Symfony is still PHP.

Happy Coding!

Well said, most can't code without having to use external libraries.

My own opinion is that every programmer should try to build their own framework.

It doesn't have to be as excellent as CakePHP, Laravel, Jquery or Bootstrap. In fact, in my opinion the backbone of a framework (I'm talking about PHP (MVC) now) are the Model, View, Controller and Router other helper classes/functions are embellishments you can do without.

As an upcoming PHP develoer, I was creating a basic forum website (BB) with basic knowledge of OOP and close to zero knowledge of design patterns, the classes were just extending each other but then I stumbled upon a book "Pro PHP MVC" and it changed my views, I had to halt the development to digest the ebook. While on that I came across design patterns and I've been wowed since then.

Although building with framework is faster and easier but knowing how a router routes a controller shows that you know what you're doing and this things are not hard to grasp.

My take is to learn a language first before diving into any framework.

But we shouldn't relegate the importance of mastering a framework as that would be probably what you will be working with daily as you would hardly need to write an mvc system for each application you build, you 2ould just use something like laravel.

But not properly understanding the underlying blocks will just make most of it feel like magic.

Even if you did learn from a framework like I did - i learnt laravel even before i understood how php oop worked but I didn't just stop I took time to try and learn how laravel did most of its "magic" like routing, views, reflection and so on.

I built a kinda mini framework just for the learning process and have a better grasp of php and programming in general.