Simon Brunning wrote: > On 8/15/05, Rocco Moretti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Which lead me to the question - what's the difference between a library > > and a framework? > > If you call its code, it's a library. If it calls yours, it's a framework.
Pretty! I don't think it is an oversimplification. The crucial difference is that between interface and implementation. A framework forces the programmers code to conform certain interfaces and contracts. It does not restrict implementation in any way ( which might be empty ). The implementation part uses library functions that do not tell much about the implementation and nothing about interfaces. Libaries give you any freedom but sometimes ( and only sometimes ) people also like to structure their code ;) What are frameworks really good for - a very true success story. A colleague of mine used to spread all kinds of flags ( state- and property markers ) over the code that were used to glue everything together until I raised my tyranny of frameworks. It was a hard struggle for an OO warrier and took me almost a year or so to become the undebated projects architect/dictator who trashed all kind of misguided "freedom" ( i.e. bad code ): "What the fuck is this?" "I worked almost a week on it!" "It has to be reworked." "No, you don't do it!" I did it. Who claims that social life is easy? What is nice about this kind of cruelness is not only my colleague became finally happy and hopefully learned at least a little bit about programming but also our customers were gratefull about stable code, thight release schedules and just-in-time requirement dispatch. Now we have some bread-and-butter maintenance contract and true freedom to experiment with other more interesting things besides this. But the struggle just starts again with the new project ;) Kay -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
