UI Frameworks

04 Sep 2020

Frontend? Backend??

As someone who mostly has experience with back end development, working with frontend development has been an entirely new experience. I have never worked with HTML or CSS prior to these past weeks, and honestly, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Sure, I had to learn an entirely new language but programming in these languages seems more akin to the English compared to Java, C, or anything similar. I don’t have to worry about wiriting data structures or complicated algorithms, just the design aspects of what I’m working on. And to make things easier, there are UI Frameworks simplifies the process by providing a base around which the rest of the project can be built.

UI Frameworks

The only UI Framework I have used so far is Semantics UI, but with what I have learned, UI Frameworks holds many benefits to software engineers.

  1. They are very efficent tools; they save deveopers a lot of time since they don’t have to unnecessarily start their code from scratch. It also makes managing big projects easier as everyone will be implementing similar code in regards to what the framework provides.
  2. (Popular) UI Frameworks have a lot of support due to the large community of people who use them. This means a large support group whenever you encounter a problem. It also means that when bugs or problems occur within the framework, it gets fixed rather quickly as many people rely on the framework in order to run their programs. 3.Using frameworks assures that your code will be compatible across all broswers.

While there are many benefits to using frameworks, there are some downsides. One that I’ve personally experienced is the limitations that they have. When I was recreating the YouTube homepage, I needed to make a horizontal scrolling bar or a carousel slider which I was unable to with Semantic UI alone. But this is expected as a framework can’t be expected to do everything I need for a project.

Overall, UI Frameworks seem to be very benefitial to software developers. I look forward to working with them and learning new ways to implement them in my upcoming programs.