dead framework theory | AI Focus
This is depressing.
It’s a terribly clickbaity (and negatively phrased) title, but if you turn it around, there’s some good advcie in here for deciding where to focus when it comes to dev technology:
- Programming languages are different, but design smells are alike.
- Frameworks are different, but the same design patterns shine through.
- Developers are different, but rules of dealing with people are uniform.
This is depressing.
The hard part of computer programming isn’t expressing what we want the machine to do in code. The hard part is turning human thinking – with all its wooliness and ambiguity and contradictions – into computational thinking that is logically precise and unambiguous, and that can then be expressed formally in the syntax of a programming language.
That was the hard part when programmers were punching holes in cards. It was the hard part when they were typing COBOL code. It was the hard part when they were bringing Visual Basic GUIs to life (presumably to track the killer’s IP address). And it’s the hard part when they’re prompting language models to predict plausible-looking Python.
The hard part has always been – and likely will continue to be for many years to come – knowing exactly what to ask for.
This is a really thoughtful look at the evolution of CSS and the ever-present need to balance power with learnability.
Anselm isn’t talking about becoming a CSS wizard, but simply having an understanding of what CSS can do. I have had similar experiences to this:
In the past years I had various situations where TypeScript developers (they called themselves) approached me and asked whether I could help them out with CSS. I expected to solve a complex problem but for me — knowing CSS very well — it was always a simple, straightforward solution or code snippet.
Let’s face it, “full stack” usually means “JavaScript”—HTML and CSS aren’t considered worthy of consideration. Their loss.
Products of all kinds are required to ensure misuse is discouraged, at a minimum, if not difficult or impossible. I don’t see why LLMs should be any different.
Take my job. Please.
Two JavaScript frameworks—Svelte and Astro—share a philosophy, but take subtly different approaches.
If you’re making a library or framework, treat it like a polyfill.
Inside me there are two wolves. They’re both JavaScript.