PHP Frameworks Don't Save Time

Experience has shown me frameworks can be useful for maintaining structure in large code base developed by multiple teams. Every developer has different abilities and a framework enforces structure and consistency throughout the code. But I've not experienced saving any substantial amount of time on a PHP project because of a framework.

The other day someone posted in the PHP subreddit asking for advice. He was about to begin work on a small project and wanted to know whether he should use a framework, and if so then which framework would be appropriate. I should have known better than to offer my two cents but I did anyway.

Slim + NotORM + Twig is nice. If it's a simple project, you probably don't need much more than that. I'm not a fan of frameworks in the slightest but I do enjoy the aforementioned combination. They're lightweight and stay out of my way, allowing me to write my functionality.

Another redditor picked up on my distaste for frameworks and asked:

So you're okay with being slower than someone with your same basic skill set? Serious question...

A serious question deserves a serious answer and so I replied, attempting to explain developer skill sets are not always the same and the differences in how we each might approach a problem has a greater effect of development time. If you like you can read my original response in the post's comments thread. Otherwise, here's a more refined presentation of my argument.

With regard to skill set, I'm a PHP programmer who has been coding in pure PHP for the better part of 13 years. I have an intimate relationship with the language and can probably write PHP code in my sleep. But as soon as a framework is introduced, I'm faced with a learning curve. Frustration inevitably ensues because simple things suddenly seem difficult, either because I'm unfamiliar with the new API and have to follow the framework's particular philosophy.

Many of my peers use frameworks, both co-workers and friends in the community. They've taken the time to learn the ins and outs of a given framework and probably can code in their sleep with it just as I do with pure PHP. But what happens when the need arises to go outside the bounds of the framework and they need to write something raw? That's when they confront their learning curve and have to dig into PHP's documentation.

We obviously don't all share the same basic skill set. Yes, we're all working in PHP, but my peers are experienced with a framework and I'm experienced with the nuances of the language itself. They're as fast writing their framework-based code as I am writing PHP; they're as slow writing pure PHP code as I am working with a framework.

But even if everything was equal on the skill side of the equation, there's still a human variable. Sharing exactly the same skills as someone else doesn't mean you'll share the same way of thinking about things or the same approach to solving a problem. Remember, there's more to programming than writing code; a large amount of time is spent simply on thinking about how to solve a problem. I can spend 6 hours planning and 2 hours coding, and a coworker can spend 7 hours planing and 1 hour coding, and although the coworker was technically faster at writing code, neither of us was actually more or less productive than the other. We both put in the same amount of time to the problem.

It's also noted how horribly fragmented the PHP ecosystem is. The world of a PHP programmer is not like the world of Python programmer where the community has largely settled on Django, or the world of a C# programmer where there's the .NET framework. Knowledge of Django and .NET is transferable across most Python and C# projects. But with PHP, a developer can learn ZF2, another developer can learn Yii, another may learn Larvel, and still another would learn Symfony... and little of the knowledge and experience they gain is transferable if the next project doesn't use their preferred framework. We face a potential learning curve before we even make our first keystroke on any project, and that takes time.

Promoting framework adoption is fine but I simply don't believe the time element is the proper argument for it. I probably wasn't as clear as I could have been in my initial response, so hopefully this clarifies things. Feel free to leave a message in the comments section if I'm still spewing senseless babble!

PS: Thanks to the kind redditor who felt my blathering response was worth Reddit Gold. You rock!