After 47 years of producing legendary bugs, I’ve reached one inescapable conclusion: every existing framework is wrong, and you should write your own.

React? Wrong. Vue? Worse. Angular? I don’t even want to discuss it. Next.js? That’s just React being dramatic. Spring Boot? A fever dream wrapped in XML annotations. Django? Opinionated in all the wrong directions.

The only framework that’s truly right is your framework. The one you’ve been building for 6 years that is 40% complete.

The Case Against Other People’s Frameworks

Here’s the fundamental problem with existing frameworks: they were written by other people. Other people with different opinions. Different experiences. Different taste in variable names. Your bugs are special. They deserve a framework that truly understands your codebase.

“Wally, why aren’t you using the company-approved framework?” the PHB demanded. “I am,” said Wally. “I’m building it.” [three years later] “Wally, is the framework done?” “It’s in active development,” said Wally, reaching for his coffee.

Why Your Framework is Better

Feature Existing Framework Your Framework
Documentation Extensive You know it by heart
Community support Thousands of devs Just you, at 2 AM
Bug tracker 4,000 open issues Zero (undiscovered)
Bundle size 200KB 4.2MB and growing
Learning curve 3 weeks Forever
Version stability Semantic versioning “It worked yesterday”
Middleware Fully implemented On the roadmap since v0.3

Phase 1: The Core (Months 1–8)

Write a routing system. This is simple. Then realize you need middleware. Then realize you need dependency injection. Then realize you need a templating engine. Then realize you need state management. Then realize you need a build pipeline. Then realize you need—

// Your framework's router (v0.0.47-alpha)
class NexaCoreRouter {
  constructor() {
    this.routes = {}; // TODO: maybe use a Map? or a WeakMap? need to research
    this.middleware = []; // TODO: implement middleware stack
    this.notFoundHandler = null; // TODO: add default 404 page
    // TODO: nested routes
    // TODO: route params (:id style)
    // TODO: query string parsing
    // TODO: support HTTP methods besides GET (GET works-ish)
    // TODO: HEAD requests (someday)
    // TODO: route groups
    // TODO: named routes
  }

  get(path, handler) {
    // TODO: validate path format
    // TODO: handle trailing slashes consistently
    this.routes[path] = handler; // good enough for now
  }

  // POST: coming in v0.1
  // DELETE: coming in v0.2
  // PUT: eventually
  // PATCH: after PUT
}

This is fine. Ship it.

Phase 2: The First Rewrite (Months 9–14)

You made some architectural mistakes in Phase 1. Rewrite from scratch with a cleaner design. Keep the README — the README is perfect.

Phase 3: The Second Rewrite (Months 15–22)

You’ve learned TypeScript. Rewrite from scratch, now with types. The framework now has a types/ folder containing 847 interface definitions and still no working middleware. The any count is at 31 and climbing.

Phase 4: The Plugin System (Month 23 – Present)

You’ve decided to make the framework extensible through plugins. This elegantly means any feature you haven’t built yet can be “added by the community.”

The community is you. You haven’t written any plugins.

Handling Progress Questions

When teammates ask for updates, rotate through these responses:

  • “It’s in active development”
  • “The architecture is solid, we’re iterating on the API surface”
  • “We’re targeting a release once the plugin system stabilizes”
  • “React has 4,000 open bugs. We have zero.”

The last one is technically true. You have zero reported bugs.

The Right Name is Half the Work

Naming your framework is the most important step, and it deserves the most time. Great framework names:

  • NexaCore
  • FluxEngine
  • VortexJS
  • UltraStack
  • Turbo-Framework-Pro-X-2 (the 2 is load-bearing)

The README should promise:

  • 10x performance over React
  • Zero dependencies (you’ll add 47 later)
  • “Opinionated but flexible” (meaningless, but universally loved)
  • Coming soon: plugin system, SSR, TypeScript, mobile support, WebAssembly, AI integration, blockchain

The XKCD Validation

As xkcd 927 immortally shows, every time there are N competing standards and someone makes a new one to unify them, there are now N+1 standards. Your framework is that N+1. You’re contributing to the ecosystem.

Career Benefits

Writing your own framework provides:

  1. Unlimited job security at your current company — only you can maintain it
  2. A compelling interview story — “I built a web framework from scratch”
  3. GitHub stars — roughly 3 (your college roommate, a bot, and someone who misclicked)
  4. Permanent sense of superiority over everyone using “someone else’s framework”

When to Open Source It

When it’s ready.

It’s never ready.

Conclusion

Every great engineer has an unfinished framework decomposing in a private repo. Express.js started as a weekend project. React was built by people who thought existing tools weren’t good enough. Your framework will be done when it’s done.

In the meantime, the real product is the framework you’re building along the way.

Also: we’re migrating the main API to it next quarter. Don’t tell the manager yet.

The author’s framework, UltraCoreFlux-X, has been in active development since 2019. Its README promises “production-ready by 2024.” The README has not been updated since 2021.