I just think that competition is healthy as it drives projects to constantly improve. In the Ruby world, Rails is basically acting as a monopoly with no competing frameworks. Now its a really good framework there is no denying that, but it is the only one for Ruby (that I’m aware of).

@Nate, just making the point that when DHH sat down to make Basecamp, did he start to write Rails from day one, or did he start writing an application (Basecamp) which he later extracted parts from to form a general framework (Rails)? In other words, I don’t think he planned Rails from the offset, it just evolved naturally over time.

Is this a good approach to designer frameworks: design an application first, then extract the framework from that? Maybe, worked really well in the case of Rails.

For most of the current PHP frameworks I think the approach is different, in that they are designed as stand-alone frameworks from day one, with no particular application in mind. Is this approach more effective? I’d be interested to know what other people think.

My problem with the current situation, and I’m guessing Andrei’s as well to some extent, is that our resources are being spread too thin. Instead of improving and consolidating these ideas, we have a bunch of tiny groups racing to implement the same thing over and over.

Lets not forget that Ruby on Rails was built for Basecamp, a single application, but I’m guessing was generalised later on into the development.

The successful adoption of a framework by other developers is based on the same things that effect the successful adoption of legacy good, namely the quality of the documentation, the extendability of the design, the availability of the original designers to provide support and answer questions etc.

On the other hand, believing that that kind of framework will be useful for everybody else–or that it’s easy to make it useful for everybody else–is madness.

If the people starting new frameworks knew what it was *actually* like to develop a good general PHP project, they certainly wouldn’t be doing because of ego.

The amount of sh*t that I take on a daily basis outweighs the thanks I get by orders of magnitude.

Every once in a while I get a ‘thank you’ email out of the blue, but for every one of those, there are ten or more ‘I-want-a-pony-ers’.

I just love all these ‘there’s-no-framework-out-there-that-meets-my-needs’ comments. It’s easily some of the best entertainment I’ve had in… well, the last 2 hours at least.

Newflash, people: at this stage of the game, there aren’t too terribly many new ideas when it comes to building frameworks, and not to stomp on your ego or anything, but you probably don’t have any of them.

Instead of whining about how no framework supports all your precious edge cases, start using one that covers *most* of what you *actually* need *most* of the time.

You’ll not only save all that time you’d have spent building your ego framework, but you’ll also save all that time you’d have spent whining.

I’m afraid I am also in the “Not Invented Here/Re-inventing the Wheel” camp on this one, as I am presently writing my own framework in PHP (for my own specific needs, I’m not looking for glory here . When I am (constantly) asked by my friends about why I am going to all of this trouble, I refer them to the following URL:

http://www.design-ireland.net/alpha/controller/view_article.php?oid=00000000070

I actually had to write an article justifying my position, and even then I can also see the value of the counter-arguments on offer.

Ultimately, I think the current large sway of MVC frameworks in the PHP community is very healthy because:

1. It is making better PHP programmers. According to the Java/.NET programmers, PHP developers can’t crasp complex OO and design patterns. Clearly this is not the case given the vibrant frameworks on offer…
2. In comparison to Ruby, which basically only has one framework, in PHP we have 50+, therefore a lot more choice. Naturally not all of these will last, as natural selection will ensure that only the strongest survive into the medium term.

I agree though that there are better things to spend your free PHP development time on these days though, if you are thinking about the greater good of the community, like testing suites, build tools, continuous integration tools etc.

Just my 2cs.