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Engineers have a long and productive history of creating building blocks for their own convenience. If we do not ignore this historical experience, we can learn many useful lessons for creating our own frameworks.

From the very beginning of the software industry, engineers and scientists have had a tendency to reuse their most successful and efficient ideas. There are quite a few historical practices that share the core objectives of a framework:

• Architectural Blueprints: Since ancient times, complex structures like buildings or ships were built based on detailed plans. These plans defined the overall structure, components, and relationships - similar to how frameworks provide a blueprint for software architecture.
• Modular Design in Engineering: Even before the computer age, engineers approached complex machines with a modular mindset. Think of early steam engines with interchangeable parts - a principle that carries...

I often see engineers mixing up libraries, frameworks, and Software Development Kits. They use these words like they mean the same thing. Even more confusion can come if we add APIs, platforms, and DSLs to the conversation. But to make our own framework, we need to understand all these things.

According to Dictionary.com, the formal definition of the term “framework” is “a basic structure, plan, or system, as of concepts, values, customs, or rules”.

The collective unconscious of humanity, also known as LLM, suggests the following definition for ADF: An application development framework is a software library offering a fundamental structure for building applications within a specific environment. It acts as a reusable foundation, supplying pre-defined functionalities and promoting code organization through established conventions. This approach streamlines development by reducing repetitive coding...

There are even more sources of confusion: we have Frameworks that could be used in the process of developing software products, but these Frameworks are not ADFs!

In the realm of software development, framework is a broad term encompassing various tools that structure and streamline different aspects of the process. We’ve established that Application Development Frameworks (ADFs) directly assist with coding. Let’s delve deeper into two other crucial categories: Architecture Frameworks and Software Delivery Frameworks.

One of such kind of Framework is Architecture Frameworks such as “4+1 View”, TOGAF, Zachman, SABSA, and DoDAF.

Another kind is Software Delivery Frameworks such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).

Architecture Frameworks

These frameworks provide a structured approach to designing the overall architecture...

To better understand Application Development Frameworks, we need first to understand key scenarios of ADF adoption.

To set up a context, we need to differentiate the design-time and operations (runtime) aspects of the software product development. It is important to note that the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) can be used as a “blueprint” for software product development iteration. Visual diagram of SDLC can help us better understand this aspect:

Figure 1.11: Spiral SDLC model is one of the most advanced SDLC models for software development: image credits to https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sdlc/sdlc_spiral_model.htm

We should always assume a repeatable iterative nature of the software product development process not because “agile” is our current state-of-the-art delivery methodology; every lean or efficient delivery approach relies on feedback loops to enable continuous...

An Application Development Framework is a software product “skeleton” that offers a fundamental structure for building applications within a specific environment. It acts as a reusable foundation, supplying pre-defined functionalities and promoting code organization through established conventions. This distinguishes it from other ways of reusing code in the form of an SDK, library, or API. It also makes ADF a unique opportunity to streamline development by reducing repetitive coding efforts, decreasing cognitive load, and promoting architecture best practices.

With this knowledge, we can explore the next chapters to find a way to calculate ADF return on investment, meet stakeholders’ expectations, and align the ADF roadmap with a common maturity model.

To know more about the following, please visit the links.

• Vendor-specific hardware SDKs like Android Studio: https://developer.android.com/studio
• Samsung TV SDK: https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/getting-started/setting-up-sdk/installing-tv-sdk.html
• MS Xbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Development_Kit
• Product-specific SDKs like PandaDoc SDK: https://developers.pandadoc.com/reference/sdk
• Hubspot SDK: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/platform/ui-extensions-sdk
• GetStream: https://getstream.io/chat/sdk/ios/
• Platform SDKs like AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/chime/chime-sdk/ & https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-net/
• Azure (https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk ), or GCP: https://cloud.google.com/sdk