Website and System Framework’s

Software and Web Development takes significant work. Using the right tool can save a ton of money. Frameworks are just one of those powerful tools, and worth considering for your next software development project.

What is it?

A framework provides essential libraries of code, written to accomplish common development tasks. These tasks can be anything from the login and permission system of an application or an interface to build the forms user use. They’re often based on a series of standards and come with documentation. The code is often open source, peer reviewed, and optimized. All of the individual parts are integrate across the development platform.

Most frameworks are based on a concept called the Model View Controller (or MVC for short). An MVC (and its derivatives) are utilized to provide a common method for how to design applications that all developers can follow. This provides developers with ways to package, and distribute code that other developers can utilize easier. Think of it as a common way everyone can write and find code within your system.

Common Frameworks

There are dozens of different frameworks for every computer language. In PHP, the most popular frameworks are Laravel and CodeIgnitor. There is also front end “Frameworks” like JQuery or Bootstrap.

Advantages

Frameworks provide unique advantages to many projects, but they’re impact can be hard to predict. We recommend frameworks for applications that require a great deal of control and customization as they can provide this with ease.

Cost

Surprise, code costs money. Not only do you need to develop it, but you also need to maintain it. This cost can be extensive in developing any project. Fortunately, many things computer coders do are commonly accomplished with code already developed. With frameworks; this code has already been developed, tested, reviewed and documented. The cost savings of a framework could be significant on some projects.

Support

The popular Frameworks are, well, popular. And this is a good thing. The labor market for the most popular frameworks are pretty extensive. None-the-less, it’s never easy to find staff and the cost of competent framework developers is often higher as it reflects their additional complexity.

The standards used in Frameworks will also provide method for developers to organize the code they write. This can ease the learning curve when introducing new developers and can decrease the cost of training new developers. It can even decrease cost by increasing code re-usability and decrease code duplication.

Speed

Code written on non-custom solutions, will contain code (Such as Cascading Style Sheets or JavaScript) that may not be need by you and your users. This makes the programs larger and in rare circumstances could lead to a performance penalty. A custom solution based on a framework can limit this impact, by requiring your developers to design things with only your users in mind.

Security

Security is a concern with any development project. And we’ve resolved plenty of security issues with the systems utilizing frameworks as well. Frameworks tend to limit the security issues faced, by restructuring common tasks in ways that will provide less opportunities for developers to make the mistakes that cause the issues. None-the-less, the problem isn’t eliminated easily. We therefor recommend a security first development process, and testing irregardless of the development resources used.

Suggested Readings