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The law of leaky abstractions - as systems become more complex eventually you rely on more abstractions that try to hide complexity.

What makes it worse in the front-end framework world is that either:

1-Projects become convoluted with 3rd party libs to solve a problem

2-The framework maintainers eventually introduce APIs that aren't backwards compatible and existing ones stranded or deprecated



When discussing this problem with ChatGPT it indeed said the best solution for this is for frameworks to be designed in a way that encourages extensibility: so a framework should stick to its core principles but allow “plugins” to extend its functionality for very specific use-cases. But I understand there’s always a trade off here, as simplicity in the framework shifts the complexity to the application.


One example of a framework that takes this approach is Apache Royale. It’s a reboot of the AS3 language and component library that works like Adobe/Apache Flex but compiles to JS targeting the browser runtime. This refactored Flex was rebuilt from the ground up with a Pay As You Go (PAYG) philosophy where components are composed of „beads“ on a strand that enable composition of the functionality you need rather than the kitchen sink.




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