Top Frameworks that are Hated on

You could find many articles on best frameworks and best practices. What about frameworks that are unpleasant to work with or become outdated? ?? Let’s analyze some statistics. Stackoverflow lists 25 web frameworks and technologies and at the bottom are Play Framework, Deno, Fastify, Drupal and Phoenix. Does that mean they are bad? That just means they are a little less used than “top frameworks and technologies”. The same source has “Loved vs Dreaded” ranking where Angular.js, Drupal, Gatsby and ASP.NET are more than 60% dreaded.?

I’ve come up with top frameworks that have controversial opinions on the web. Also, added their most prominent drawbacks.?

Laravel?

Laravel is a web application framework that’s both favored by many and avoided by others. Built-in features are what makes it quite popular. Laravel is also mostly a back end framework but front-end functions are available too.?

Why is it often hated then? Compared to other popular frameworks, it doesn’t have enough functionality to develop large web applications. Moreover, it has limited support, relatively small community and too frequent updates. The old versions become buggy and new ones can cause problems. Lack of continuation between versions is a setback to devs.? Probably the most noticeable thing is that it’s slow in development. Some say that the code is bloated as the most solutions are premade and “adding more code” is a common pattern.

Play Framework

Play Framework is an open source framework that allows quick web app building with Java and Scala. It has minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications. Now about the disadvantages ??Some developers claim that documentation of Play Framework is not exhaustive and you have to dig through source code to find a solution. What’s more, “steep learning curve” is mentioned a lot ??It takes a lot of reading of extensive documentation.?

.NET Framework

Often used to develop applications and XML web services that can run on multiple platforms. It’s claimed to have a wide range of features, APIs, code libraries and compilers. However, the framework was often criticized for memory leaks and other memory-related issues. The other negative thing is the bumpy transition to newer versions. Last but not the least is that it was created by Microsoft so products will be dependent on Microsoft decisions and it’s also a “closed” ecosystem.?

Fastify

Fastify is a web framework used for fast and easy developer’s experience. It’s a backend one with plugin architecture that is often compared to Express.js. The cons are mainly related to the nature of all new frameworks: new and small community, not well-developed documentation and harder debugging. Now it’s widely perceived as extra compared to other frameworks. With time, it could grow and improve though.

Angular?

It’s not a bad one per se, but somehow it’s called “hard-to-learn”, “stubborn”, “slow”. We need to understand that Angular has a few versions and the updates after the second version are getting better. What drawbacks are usually named for early versions? When you add more, everything runs slower so performance might lack. Complex scenarios in apps require a lot of skill and attention. Angular is often not beginner friendly and has a “steep learning curve”. Versions Angular 1 and 2 have too many options to do the same thing, so it's hard to choose.?

Summing Up

There are no bad frameworks, or worst frameworks. It depends on one’s preferences, expertise and patience ??If the project needs a particular framework and its functionality, pros will outweigh the cons. When choosing tech stack and frameworks for the specific project, get opinions of skilled professionals and look at similar cases. Happy coding!