There’s an interesting discussion about programming frameworks going on over at the Wharton Computing developer blog: Why Not Frameworks?

Wharton Computing is where I work as a ColdFusion developer/administrator. There’s fifteen or so full time ColdFusion and Flex developers, and ten or fifteen more part-time developers scattered throughout the school.

It’s great to read what people think about the place of programming frameworks inside a school where the focus is on rapid and flexible development.

I’ve got to echo the sentiments of everyone else: cf.Objective was a top notch conference.

I can’t think of a session that didn’t offer something new or challenging to think about. The smaller crowd allowed for some great interaction with community gurus and other developers. And the double-stuffed pillow topped beds, fresh carved pork lunches and artisan pastries were certainly nice touches too.

Overall, I came away with the challenge to improve my coding practices increase the planning that I put into projects.

At one point Terry and I were lobbying Mark Drew, lead developer of the CFEclipse project, to include more remote development features in CFEclipse. Remote development is how most of the developers in our shop work, but it definitely isn’t the industry standard.

Mark questioned why he should divert time away from other enhancements to build in support for bad practices. He used the analogy that if everyone had a six inch pointed spike fixed to their car’s steering wheel, we’d all be much better drivers.

Avoid cutting corners in any software development, plain and simple. There may not be a sharpened spike staring me in the face when I write code, but bad practices usually have a way of catching up.

I think it’s time to overcome my aversion to frameworks. I’ve always been worried about a hit to application performance and keeping up to date with framework code changes. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to turn away from the industry tested patterns and practices that frameworks enforce. That’s not to mention all the repetitive busy work that frameworks automate so that I can focus on building better apps.