How Do You Decide Which Framework to Use?

GPolancic asks: "Software frameworks are increasingly popular software reuse technique, because they provide infrastructure functionalities to an application, or a layer of an application and therefore reduce the work of a software developer. Numerous complementary (for example: Struts and Hibernate) and competitive (for example: JSF vs. Struts or JSF vs. ASP.Net) software frameworks are available as both proprietary and open source software. A major precondition for the success of a software framework is their acceptance, which is related to market share or community size. On the other side, application developers need to review and select the best available software framework for their needs. Which factors do you evaluate before you decide to use a specific software framework?" "Our presumption is that software developers mostly evaluate following software framework characteristics based on:

1. perceived ease of use (e.g. easy to learn, easy to adapt)
2. perceived usability (e.g. improving developer performances, reducing work, faster development),
3. perceived sustainability (e.g. perceived long term support, supporting standards, clear project directions) and
4. perceived fit to specific developer requirements (e.g. suited language, suited functions, suited architecture).

What are your criteria? Do you support the factors listed above? I am not asking for a preference on a specific software framework, but rather an explanation on the non-trivial task of framework selection, which might be very usable for both frameworks developers and framework users."

Comments

Go for the hype.

[croddy]

Personally, I'd pick Ruby on Rails. Not that I have any technical reason to prefer it, mind you... but man, it's so jam-packed with alliterative goodness and it's all Web 2.0'ed out and shit. And it has some crap called a scaffold. Do you have any idea how many struts it takes to build just one scaffold? No? Well it takes a lot!!

Re:missing

[larry bagina]

Do you also think linux is easy enough for your grandmother? Do you also think ogg vorbis has widespread use?

I think you've spent too much time on slashdot.

Let me tell you about this better web technology

[ad0gg]

ColdFusion, yup thats right. You can have your struts and scaffold, my website is power by cold fusion. Let me tell you it picks up the honeys when i say i work with cold fusion. Good luck picking up a lady telling them you work on struts, scaffold or java beans.

Use what everybody else is using

[burris]

If it is really popular, it must be really good. See C++, Java, XML, Windows, McDonalds, etc...

Here is how my boss did

[2Bits]

That reminds me of a (quite large) project a few years ago. We were deciding what language to use, what framework, what methodology, etc. And the boss asked:"How many frameworks can we use in the project?" We gave a few, and he wrote down one himself. He then drew one on each corner of a paper, put his pencil in the middle, and spinned. It pointed to COBOL, which is the one he wrote down.

Imagine the look on our face... One of the colleagues later told us he almost peed in his pants for that experience.

Seriously though, this story is just a bit exagerated, but not that much, the selection process was almost like what I just described :)

You know, I was wondering

[bradleyland]

I was wondering how hard it must have been for the submitter to write that summary without mentioning Rails at least once. It feels almost like bait.

bloop bloop

Good question.

[deep44]

I usually start by asking myself, "what programming language am I most familiar with?" .. then, once I have that figured out, I spam "Ask Slashdot" until they post my question. By then, I've already lost interest and/or forgot about the reason for needing an application framework in the first place, so I close the loop by replying to the question with a completely offtopic (yet slightly humorous) comment.

That's just me, though. YMMV.

Frameworks?

[Theatetus]

*shrug* I use Lisp. Most frameworks take about 4 or 5 macros to emulate. Not really worth the time to download any of them.

Those who don't use Lisp are doomed to reimplement it...

Obligatory reference

[thib_gc]

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel .3.219431.12

Re:Let me tell you about this better web technolog

[moonbender]

So are perls...

Re:Use what you know

[mattoo]

Yeah great! Fear of learning new things is always the way to success...

Lovecraft metaphor

[smittyoneeach]

Ruby on Rails sets off like a Cimmerian for conquest.
Struts and Hibernate get consumed by an error trace of Cthulhuian proportions, if the supply of live sacrifices runs out, which it eventually shall, doomed one.