Pros and Cons Of Using Web Development Frameworks

Hi everyone, in this blog, I am going to talk about the pros & cons of using a web development framework, that includes UI frameworks as well as front-end & back-end frameworks. So basically there are three types of frameworks in web development that can be categorized as shown below:

Types of frameworks:

1. UI/CSS Frameworks: Bootstrap, Materialize, Bulma etc.
2. Front End Javascript Frameworks: Angular, React, Vue etc.
3. Backend Frameworks: Laravel, Express, Django etc.

So I will start off with some of the pros of using a UI/CSS framework like bootstrap. 

UI/CSS Framework PROS

1. Faster Development & Prototyping: You get a faster UI development if you use something like bootstrap rather than writing your own CSS and what I really like about these frameworks is the prototyping aspect. So if you are focused on a product, then using something like bootstrap will allow you to don't have to spend much time on the UI and you can focus on the product, which happens in the real world.
2. Responsive By Default: These frameworks are responsive by default, the grid system that they come with because they use mobile first approach so they look good on mobile devices. So you usually don't have to write a lot of media queries for responsiveness.
3. Browser Compatibility: These frameworks are well tested on all of the modern browsers.
4. Familiar To Other Developers:  Basically most of the developers are aware of the core classes of a popular UI framework like bootstrap. So it's easier to work on with a team. 
5. Javascript Widgets/Plugins: Javascript widgets & plugins like modal, carousels, accordions etc. are available.
6. Documentation & Support: Most of the documentation of these frameworks, is really good and it has some really good examples and a lot of times you can just copy and paste and change it to your liking.

UI/CSS Framework CONS

1. Stops developers from learning CSS: It is not actually a con for the framework, it's just kind of an unfortunate side-effect, so a lot of people just learn the very basics of CSS and start using frameworks and when it comes to something like creating a custom theme, they are lost.
2. Less Customization:  If you want your website to really different, you probably have to create your own UI and write your own custom CSS and you can't do it easily while using a framework.
3. Many sites look the same: If you don't customize it enough, then yes. You can easily spot a bootstrap site if you are just using all the default classes with all the default colors
4. Lots of overriding styles: One of the disadvantages of customization is sometimes it overrides style and I really don't like to do that because it feels messy to override styles and put the !important flag and stuff like that. What I would suggest is to download the source code and use SASS to.customise the variables to change the look and feel complete. 
5. Dependence of jQuery for certain things: These frameworks have some dependence on jquery for certain things like modals, carousels etc.