I would have never thought that I would be the one that would be writing this blog post. Why I created my own framework…. I’m sure that there are individuals out there that are far more talented than I am for writing a framework. Why would I even take on such a task? Why is this even a problem to challenge? You have so many options for choosing a framework why throw another wrench into the mess?
All of this questions I had to answer for myself before I decided to write any code. I thought about this questions for a very long time, I played around with multiple frameworks, I looked at the positives and negatives of some of them and I even went as far as contributing source code back to them. So why now? Why even begin?
Two years ago I wrote a blog post titled Forking mean.io I talked about an open source scaffolding framework. I loved the fact that with one single command I could get started on a project right away. This was great! As time started to go by I started to feel some of the pains from the framework.
The pains were small at first, all of the errors and problems were manageable, write this fix that, and catch and throw. The usual that you would expect. But as my business started to grow I was faced with writing quality code. What happens when the runtime that you depend on requires an update? What happens when the tool that you are using starts getting in your way? This continued on for months and something did not feel right to me until this day.
I encountered this bug using the framework
I went DEEP trying to fix this issue, spending hours and hours reading through source code.
Until I found a solution to the problem, I submitted my solution to the dev team and the response was.
Crickets…
Nothing……..
To tell you the truth I was getting frustrated, and I had to do something about it.
This is where most people stop and choose something else to work on.
I started to think about all of this problems and I decided to create a framework from the ground up that would not get in your way, a tool that is as flexible as your project and give it away for free to the wider community.
Can I do this?
I thought I could… Who says that I can’t? I started to think what that tool would look like? Would it be easy to use? How could I protect this tool from updates and what about feature requests? Where would I get the funds to build such a tool?
Here is the thing, I make a significant amount of money writing quality code for my clients and I need to be able to deliver projects that require a team of 4-6 people with a team of 2 and pass those savings back to the client. Financially I could spend out of pocket cash and code for change but would I?
Right now the entire ecosystem revolving around JavaScript is a complete world wind of tools and frameworks. Individuals see that there is an amazing opportunity for those that are willing to step up and take part of the action, and others complain about how good it was back in the old days. Where do I fall? Complainer or an action taker?
I decided on the long painful road of being an action taker and helping others. Maybe it’s my gift of always wanting to be a giver by nature.
Deciding to start is a hard enough problem where do you even start?
All of this starts with educational means of improving your situation whatever, that situation might be.
This is why I decided if I was going to do this I needed a way to be able to quickly bring people on board using this framework so they too could see the benefit of using this tool.
This is why before writing one single line of code for the framework I started to work on the education part of the framework instead of writing code.
I created the most effective way to learn to become a Full-Stack Developer.
MEAN Stack 2.0 Step-by-Step Beginners Guide
This training is 14+ hours of how to become a Full-Stack Developer.
Now in the Course, we actually end up building the framework without me telling you that we are doing it.
At the end of the Course, I do the big reveal of what we just did and most of the students are floored by all the learnings that they obtained.
Now that I had the educational part out of the way, they too could start benefiting from the framework. This got me thinking, though… could I go a step further? and the answer was YES! I wrote just 500 lines of code that would scaffold your next project in seconds.
Now I can say that the open source framework is now available for you to download.
Now the tool brings such a BIG amount of value to the marketplace I wanted to be 100% certain that this tool got in the hands of the right individuals. I started to think who would be the individuals that would benefit the most from this tool? and it hit me! It’s people like me. I made the description of the GitHub repository this:
Built for Entrepreneurs, Innovators, and Consultants
The next step would be to actually write some code with this framework. So I went with the nomenclature of “Eat Your Own Dog Food” and I wrote the landing page for the framework itself with the framework and the results are AMAZING!
I got this done in under one hour and works wonderfully!
Let’s first start with the user experience because at the end of the day this is what matters.
One of the most important features that users care about is SPEED. Most scaffolding frameworks out there pack the starter templates with MBs of files and hundreds of requests making the tool horrible to use for other developers and a nightmare to maintain.
The goal of the framework is to empower you not cripple you, this is why all those decisions are not decided for you instead you have to consciously decide to use those libraries or binaries.
Here are the results of the first project moved to production.
This is without using any compressors or speed up performance tweaks. Imagine how much faster you could go with other tools that you can setup yourself?
Not too bad if you ask me.
This leaves to Today… and why I’m writing this blog post.
I NEED YOUR HELP!!
I can’t do this alone. This is why I’m reaching out to you I need developers to start using this tool and start submitting request and bug reports to GitHub. To better shape this project into an amazing tool/opportunity for others to benefit from.
If you are still reading up to this point, here is your chance to take part of this amazing opportunity.
Share this post.
Talk to you soon,
Rick H.
I always had a passion for the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and I knew I wanted to do something to make a difference in the world. I just didn’t know where to start. I was an immigrant in a new country, grew up in a tough environment, and wasn’t sure how… Read More
