Re: [PHP] Zend Framework...where to start? -- don't.

Hi Daevid,

Your included db.inc.php file contains what appears to be a very strict
injunction against people on this list making use of it.

In particular, these lines:

#-------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Confidential - Property of Symcell Corporation
# Do not copy or distribute.
# Copyright 2005-2008 Symcell Corporation. All rights reserved.
#
#-------------------------------------------------------------------

Any chance you can resend this file without that warning included, if you
have the authority to remove it?

All the best,

M is for Murray


On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:39 AM, Daevid Vincent <daevid@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Not to start a Holy War (as these "to framework" or "not to framework"
debates often turn into), but I personally had a horrible experience with
using frameworks. I was forced to use Symfony at my last job and it was so
cumbersome and slow to do even the simplest things. The whole MVC thing can
be overkill. Plus the learning curve can be quite steep. Then if you want to
hire other developers to work with you, you have to train them and let them
ramp up on not only the framework but also your core project too! More
wasted time.

The pages are significantly slower than straight PHP by orders of
magnitude: http://paul-m-jones.com/?p=315

The basic problem with frameworks is they try to be one thing for all
people. This carries a lot of baggage with it. There's a lot of crap you end
up pulling in that you don't want/need. Plus if you want to deviate at all,
you either have to roll your own, or sometimes you simply just can't. They
seem attractive with all their plugins and stuff, but honestly, rarely do
the plugins do EXACTLY what you want, the way you want. It might be as
simple as trying to change the look/feel of a button or something and you'll
find out that you can't -- so now you have this website that has this
section that doesn't look like the rest of your site. And if you find a bug,
you have to try to either fix it yourself and then keep those changes
migrated into new updates, or submit it to the developer and hope they
implement them (and trust me, you can submit to them and have them rejected
for all sorts of lame reasons -- even though the work has been done and
you're using it!)

I advise against it. Just follow good practices and use thin wrappers and
functions. Don't get all OO googlie eyed and try to over-engineer and
over-OO the code. OO is great for some things (like a User class) but don't
start making some OO page renderer or form builder. Don't fall into the DB
Abstraction trap either -- just use a wrapper around your DB calls (see
attached), so you can swap out that wrapper if (and you almost never do) you
change the DB. Don't be suckered by something like QuickForms -- you WILL
run into limitations that you can't get around and are at their mercy. Don't
buy the hype that DIV's are the magic bullet and TABLEs are "poor design" --
Tables are still the best and most ubiquitous way to align things in a
browser agnostic way (including mobile phones, etc.) and to layout forms.

I've not used Zend myself, so I can't say for certain, but the above
tenements I think would still hold true. I guess I would trust the Zend one
the most given they actually make PHP, but at this point in time, I would
never choose to use a bloated framework. Then again, I write enterprise
level and very custom applications (Saas) so maybe this doesn't apply if all
you're trying to do is make yet another Blog or Photo-album or
personal/corporate website or something generic/basic. I've been coding
nearly 20 years and founded several $MM companies. That's my take (or rant
depending on how you look at it).

Daevid.
http://daevid.com


On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 20:36 +0000, jcorry@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

I've been reading about these great new 'frameworks' for PHP development.

The most similar experience I have so far is using PEAR/Smarty in
application development.

I am becoming very interested in adding one (or more) of these frameworks
to my work existence.

I'm leaning toward the Zend Framework for the following reasons:
1. Zend's commitment to PHP in the enterprise environment
2. I'm studying for Zend PHP certification...so remaining within the same
family sort of makes sense.
3. It's widely heralded as a very good 'framework'
4. Integration with my IDE, Zend Studio
5. Great support/userbase/forums/docs

I'm getting ready to start a new project that is going to be somewhat of a
stretch for me. It'll be probably the most complex project I've done where
I'm the only designer/developer and have to do everything myself: from func
spec to mockups to wireframes to database design to documentation to code
to maintenance...all of it is me.

What do you think, should I kill 2 birds with one stone and use the ZF to
build this new project? Or would it slow me down to add 'learning the ins
and outs of a new way of working' to my already long list of tasks and
short time to complete them?

Zend touts this thing as 'saving time' and 'letting you work more
efficiently'. Will the new developer who is learning how to use ZF realize
those efficiencies or are they only for the people who are quite
experienced with the framework?

I'm curious about whether it's practical to begin with a framework by using
it on a real, production project.

??

John Corry



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