Continuing our journey through the biggest PHP Frameworks we step a bit closer to Symfony this time. They say that “Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes” but this, I think, can be said for each one of them. What is very helpful when it’s about Symfony is that has a fast learning curve and this is very important for many developers. If you are interested in a technology that has a fast learning curve doesn’t mean that you are a “surface” developer and you are not profound. If your project it’s asking for something available now but efficient and secure and built using the latest technologies then you should choose, what we said before, the one that’s best for you not necessarily for your image. It’s a different perspective isn’t it? That’s what we want to show here, a different perspective.
If you need to build in a fast manner projects or to add to your project different features you can easily choose Symfony. It’s just a bit slower than CodeIgniter and has a different approach but it’s a great framework.
Going forward we’ll say that if you need a framework that it’s bigger than the first two and has a great list of features then you should choose CakePHP.
What you should know about this article is that we’ve made our list based on the learning curve and simplicity and when it’s about that CakePHP is on third place. It’s a great framework, as we said before, it’s offering great perspectives but even like that it’s a bit slow for us and too connected to different kind monolithic libraries style. We don’t like that, at all.
What I need from a framework it’s only the skeleton, if I need the application also then I would use a code generator. If you use one of those make sure that you don’t call yourself a developer, programmer or coder, find yourself a different name.
CakePHP says that is a “rapid development framework” and it’s providing “an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications”. Yes, it’s truth but is not so easy when it’s about speed and when you are in need over night to build something. It’s great up to a point and because of that we have chosen something different. If you use CakePHP great, if you don’t use CakePHP then make sure you know exactly what you want from your framework before you start everything.
more soon…
Read More in Part III