> Summing it up, a framework tries to save you work by make you define an overly complex configuration, that has to accomodate every possible use case.
I was disappointed that the author constructs his arguments against frameworks by using Zend, and Zend alone... when there are things like Symfony, Cakephp (which I'm a fan of) and Code Igniter. It is what allows him make a generalization like the one above that is flat out wrong for frameworks like codeigniter and Cake.
I've been a PHP guy for many years (still am) and I know that as you program more and more in PHP, you come up with a way of doing things that eventually become your own sort of framework ... so the people that really appreciate frameworks are more experienced developers (no insult to newbs) because they can more easily recognize all the problems that these frameworks solve for them ... to newer programmers it looks like bureaucracy, magic and stuff that gets in the way of them actually expressing their ideas in code.
I know. I was one of those guys.
So yeah ... You can use PHP without frameworks and if you like doing that, then keep doing it ... however, I would advise any PHP developer to keep an eye on the major frameworks and keep evaluating ways that they can save you time and effort as you take on more complex applications with bigger and better teams (yes ... you actually get to develop code with other people as you take on bigger projects).
PS: My only complaint with the PHP framework I like ... CakePHP, is that it can be a bit slow and the documentation can be truly horrendous ... to where you have to go digging around in the source code to figure out the things you can put in the $options array in a call like this ...
Your post ? Genius.
That's exactly what I think. Most of the people who hate frameworks are those who don't appreciate or just love to reinvent the wheel everyday.
Or they built their own framework over the years and either refuse to accept it or refuse to part with it (so they tell you frameworks suck and they only use their own code).
And you know what? ... thats okay.
I think a lot of people just turned off by the whole
"Frameworks are the right way to program, and if you aren't doing frameworks then you're doing it wrong!" attitude of some in the community.
I think if you let people be, they'll eventually find their way to these frameworks because the amount of time and effort they save you is just too hard to ignore, once you get to a certain point.
Yeah, I agree fully. The guy who wrote this article appears to be completely oblivious to CodeIgniter, which is a very, very lightweight framework. I just recently revisited an old CI site I made months ago and it only took about 5 minutes to relearn the whole structure of the site. My controllers are thinner and more beautiful than supermodels, my views are extremely light and logically distributed, and my models are the only places (aside from my JavaScript) where I make reference to any data. When your controllers have one line that gets AJAX data, another line that determines if it's a new item or an existing one, and one more line to die() off the direct result of my model call...life becomes a hell of a lot easier and coding an application becomes an exercise in beautiful abstract thought instead of tedious tinkering.
I was disappointed that the author constructs his arguments against frameworks by using Zend, and Zend alone... when there are things like Symfony, Cakephp (which I'm a fan of) and Code Igniter. It is what allows him make a generalization like the one above that is flat out wrong for frameworks like codeigniter and Cake.
I've been a PHP guy for many years (still am) and I know that as you program more and more in PHP, you come up with a way of doing things that eventually become your own sort of framework ... so the people that really appreciate frameworks are more experienced developers (no insult to newbs) because they can more easily recognize all the problems that these frameworks solve for them ... to newer programmers it looks like bureaucracy, magic and stuff that gets in the way of them actually expressing their ideas in code.
I know. I was one of those guys.
So yeah ... You can use PHP without frameworks and if you like doing that, then keep doing it ... however, I would advise any PHP developer to keep an eye on the major frameworks and keep evaluating ways that they can save you time and effort as you take on more complex applications with bigger and better teams (yes ... you actually get to develop code with other people as you take on bigger projects).
PS: My only complaint with the PHP framework I like ... CakePHP, is that it can be a bit slow and the documentation can be truly horrendous ... to where you have to go digging around in the source code to figure out the things you can put in the $options array in a call like this ...
Things like that, I bet, slow its adoption.