[proto-n]

It seems you only want to call MVC frameworks frameworks? But there's millions of other types of frameworks for thousands of purposes. Framework is a generic term (for which the definition is usually the calls into you/you call into it thing). What it does and whether it's a framework is two completely orthogonal things.

[qudat]

> It seems you only want to call MVC frameworks frameworks?

No, I'm illustrating the limited scope of React. I wouldn't call a chunk of code that handles the V in MVC a framework.

> for which the definition is usually the calls into you/you call into it thing

Again there's nuance here:

    import { useEffect, useState } from "react";
    import { createRoot } from 'react-dom/client';
    document.body.innerHTML = '<div id="app"></div>';
    const root = createRoot(document.getElementById('app'));
    root.render(<App />);

    function App() {
      const counter = useState(0);
      useEffect(() => { console.log('effect') }, []);
      return <h1>hello world: {counter}</h1>
    }

I'm "calling into" react (3) times here, while react is calling "into me" (1) time. Are we saying any external source code that accepts a function as a parameter is considered a framework?

All react does is render/diff/patch your dom, everything else is up to the end-developer. Would you call `express` a framework? Again this is semantics but look at all the react frameworks that exist on top of react, why do those exist?

[lmm]

> I'm "calling into" react (3) times here, while react is calling "into me" (1) time.

It's calling into you three or more times, invisibly, if I remember the details of what useEffect and useState actually do at runtime correctly. Which rather illustrates the point.

> Are we saying any external source code that accepts a function as a parameter is considered a framework?

Code that accepts a function for narrowly scoped use where the control flow is still under your control (e.g. map/reduce/filter libraries) is probably not a framework. But external code where you register a callback that gets called some time later, not under your control, is pretty much the definition of a framework.