In a previous post I discussed "MACH", an industry acronym that refers to a combination of modern infrastructure that is used for constructing highly scalable software solutions. Well there is a new concept which has been getting a lot of attention lately, and as luck would have it, it also has good alignment with the MACH acronym... Meta-Framework.
A Meta-Framework is exactly what you would expect - it is a framework which stitches together multiple development frameworks. This concept originated in the JavaScript community due to well known limitations in the most popular JavaScript frameworks such as React, Vue, etc.. The problem with these frameworks is that they are essentially only good at one thing... they are libraries for building modern web UI. And while they make writing the front-end simpler, they have no opinions at all regarding what goes on further back in the stack.
To be more specific, most JavaScript frameworks are not prescriptive about how to style your UI using CSS, they do not support layouts or templates for the structure of your pages, they do not take SEO into consideration for rendered content, they do not provide any guidance for Url routing, and they do not offer any native capabilities for creating back-end services to manage data.
To fill these gaps, some new frameworks have emerged which attempt to offer a broader range of capabilities bundled as an "all-in-one" solution. This is not a new concept... "uber" frameworks have been around for decades... the difference is that the older, more mature development frameworks tend to cater to the legacy server-based development model whereas the newer meta-frameworks focus on the modern single page application approach.
Optimally, a meta-framework should provide a "Component Mesh" architecture - a well orchestrated environment comprised of loosely coupled client and server components which can be developed, deployed, and dynamically composed at run-time. This aligns well with the MACH philosophy and facilitates the creation of highly scalable and maintainable software applications.
Find out how Devessence can utilize meta-frameworks to accelerate your business goals.