Frameworks
Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:44 am
I'm sure this topic has been covered time and time again in this forum, but I had some extra concerns I wanted to address here. I'm relatively new when it comes to development, and I'll say I've probably developed two fully OOP production web applications. I don't really work as a web developer, so the development I do is as much for the learning experience as it is for the pay, so basically, I'm trying to figure out how to do things the best possible way.
My first web app I made after reading Zandstra's PHP 5: Objects, Patterns, Practice, which marked my "Awakening," to the world of OOP. Anyway, I basically created the web app according to this book, by using the patterns for Data Mapper, Front Controller, Template Views, etc all based on what was defined in the book. I probably could have found a framework that used these patterns, but as I said before, my goal was always to learn to do it, so coding it all from the ground up seemed natural. Anyway, I finished that project, and it works like a dream...I really like the framework I created for it.
Anyway, my next project came along--this one for another person, as opposed to the formerly mentioned personal project--so I thought I'd try out another framework, like Zend. I've just finished it, but it was a disaster. I won't go dissing the framework, as maybe my bad experience was just because I didn't study it well enough, but I honestly spent 90% of my time in that reference manual trying to figure out what craziness they had going on with the MVC framework. Again, maybe I just didn't understand it well enough, but it seemed extremely bloated, hard to use, and all around making the developer use obscure and unclean code, when I could do it much easier, and much cleaner in my old framework.
I'm writing this thread to ask if anyone has had the same experience, and could possibly give a bit of advice. I'm currently enjoying a nice vacation (two weeks) and I thought I'd spend the first week studying some frameworks and patterns (Reading Fowler and such), and then the next week really making my current framework perfect, and not use any 3rd party frameworks.
However, I know that there are other frameworks out there, and maybe they are better. Does anyone use other frameworks aside from Zend and could recommend I give them a try? Or if I didn't like Zend I probably won't like most of the others? Or should I just give Zend another try?
My first web app I made after reading Zandstra's PHP 5: Objects, Patterns, Practice, which marked my "Awakening," to the world of OOP. Anyway, I basically created the web app according to this book, by using the patterns for Data Mapper, Front Controller, Template Views, etc all based on what was defined in the book. I probably could have found a framework that used these patterns, but as I said before, my goal was always to learn to do it, so coding it all from the ground up seemed natural. Anyway, I finished that project, and it works like a dream...I really like the framework I created for it.
Anyway, my next project came along--this one for another person, as opposed to the formerly mentioned personal project--so I thought I'd try out another framework, like Zend. I've just finished it, but it was a disaster. I won't go dissing the framework, as maybe my bad experience was just because I didn't study it well enough, but I honestly spent 90% of my time in that reference manual trying to figure out what craziness they had going on with the MVC framework. Again, maybe I just didn't understand it well enough, but it seemed extremely bloated, hard to use, and all around making the developer use obscure and unclean code, when I could do it much easier, and much cleaner in my old framework.
I'm writing this thread to ask if anyone has had the same experience, and could possibly give a bit of advice. I'm currently enjoying a nice vacation (two weeks) and I thought I'd spend the first week studying some frameworks and patterns (Reading Fowler and such), and then the next week really making my current framework perfect, and not use any 3rd party frameworks.
However, I know that there are other frameworks out there, and maybe they are better. Does anyone use other frameworks aside from Zend and could recommend I give them a try? Or if I didn't like Zend I probably won't like most of the others? Or should I just give Zend another try?