What is the difference between a library and a framework?
In: Technology
Hmmm… thinking in ELI5 terms, trying to come up with a simple analogy.
A library could be a big book of car part specifications that you could use to build a car from scratch. A framework is more like an actual car that you can start up and drive right away, and then you learn how to fiddle with things like power seat settings, how to roll the windows up and down, paint color, bumper stickers, and whatnot.
Both of these things are powerful and useful – but you have to be more careful and aware when jumping into a new framework, in my experience. Sometimes, default behaviors that are baked into frameworks are not things that you actually want, and lack of understanding of framework basic assumptions can have spectacular unintended consequences if you’re not willing or able to dive deep into how the framework was built and what it’s trying to accomplish.
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