This question is about what methodology to follow when evaluating one or more PHP frameworks to see which one would suit the needs of my project best.
In other words, given the time pressures that every developer faces, what concrete steps can I take to assess one or more PHP frameworks without having to go to the extent of getting to know each framework in intimate detail?
I know that some of the considerations would be subjective such as, which is my preferred language or my style of coding, but assessing your preferred language and style of coding would be a concrete step towards defining your chosen framework.
I’m narrowing this down to PHP just to assume that the choice of language has already been made.
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If you want to have a solid comparison you have to go and read the details, there is no other way around, unless you say I’m fine with reading some articles and blog post and I’m willing to rely on their assumptions. But anyways, here is how I would assess a new framework for a specific team and their project, while trying to avoid going deep into the framework specific details:
Order is not important.
Learning Curve
How long it’s gonna take for you and the rest of team to understand the structure of the framework? You can feel if the learning curve is too steep very soon in the beginning. Don’t you forget to start it by writing a real-world example like your actual program logic that is supposed to be finally implemented on top of that framework. A hello-world example from the getting started section wouldn’t give you that much insight.
Meta-work
How much overhead this specific framework will add to your overall development time? Are there any automated CRUD generating tools for the framework and are you willing to use them? Try to see how much extra work you need to do in order to get a trivial task done.
Libraries
Try to see if the framework will bring anything to the table that you [might] actually need for your project. Check the libraries and classes that framework offers and try to be realistic. For example if you don’t need a PayPal integration class, then don’t count it as an advantage.
Structure
Some frameworks have serious design-flaw issues. Try to search on the ‘net and see if you can find any serious problem regarding the structure of the framework. Again try to be realistic, don’t look for some insane issues but make sure the developers of the framework has spend enough time thinking about the bare-bone structure of their framework.
Community
Try to see how active is their community. Don’t count on the numbers, go to different places and ask couple of questions and see how long it’s gonna take time until you get some real answers.
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