The framework

If somebody would ask me for a contribution to the buzzword bingo game then my 50 cents would be the word "framework".

Companies are building huge frameworks - even big pieces of software - stating that it does provide a framework that enables you to do everything and the workflows, the meta-information and all the rest only has to be configured or implemented.

Well folks, they sell you everything and nothing. Often they even give away their framework for free. What they sell you then is consulting, configuration and implementation.

A piece of software being "only" a framework can make application development easier but a framework without some concrete implementation is worth less than an application (that is maybe less flexible) but actually doing something that is saving you work or opening opportunities you didn't have before.

Nowadays companies do have to maintain several different pieces of software and each new piece introduced has to be flexible so that it can fit in. However, the flexibility can be exaggerated to a level where pieces of software are written that - in theory - could help you to achieve everything, "it just has to be implemented". That makes real sense...

From the technical point of view there is another issue arising with the hype of frameworks when they are stapled together. A larger application can make use of several frameworks and libraries for object serialization, javascript operations (AJAX), database abstraction and many more. For smaller applications making use of many frameworks you get a big bulk of overhead.