Greetings,
My name is Matt. I recently discovered Fuel about two weeks ago. Up until that point, I have researched and tried out just about every php web framework. On the surface, many of them looked fantastic. However, once I studied deep into the actual workflow, I continued to be discouraged because I am tired of studying another framework only to hit roadblocks and become disappointed.
Either the framework had a huge footprint or the work flow just didn't make sense. There are many things I look for in a framework and I realize I have to make a compromise at some point. I was apprehensive about starting a framework that is very new such as FuelPHP. The workflow looks fantastic and you have eliminated a lot of redundant, bulky code that many of the other frameworks share. I understand that a lot of this has to do with the fact that Fuel was designed with PHP 5.3 in mind. Thus allowing things like namespaces and closure.
I would have stuck with Fuel a while back but I am very apprehensive taking the time to learn the framework only to have it not be around in two years. Also, because Fuel is so new, the community is extremely small.
So, I am looking for some convincing reasons why I shouldn't have to worry about Fuel being gone in two years. Is it possibly that Fuel's recent popularity is due to the fact that it is one of the only native PHP 5.3 frameworks? What happens when Yii, CodeIgnitor and CakePHP come out with their next release? All three of them have huge communities where help is readily available Yii is still very much a young framework. It looked extremely attractive on the surface but when thing I noticed is, they have basically been slapping 'emulated" 5.3 type features without makinig them native. Thus, the additions make the framework extremely confusing. Don't even get me started with Symfony 2. I would have to be forced to use YAML, Twig and have never used them before. I realize I can use any template language I want with bundles. However, why would I want to add an entire Doctrine or Propel ORM? Talk about heavy code.
Someone please tell me why Fuel is here to stay and not just another fad because of it's 5.3 structure.
Thanks,
Matt
Hello Matt,
I will start by saying that choosing a framework is very personal, and therefor it is extremely difficult to give someone advice.
The right framework usually depends on the task at hand (which will dictate the features you need) and the personal style of the developer or development team. Some prefer a rigid framework which dictates your way of working with it, some want a flexible framework that they can adapt to their needs.
We started with Fuel late 2010 because we were extremely fed up with the existing frameworks, for reasons you have discovered yourself, as well as lack of modularity and reusability.
We all make a living developing applications. To do so we needed a fast and flexible framework, which would enable us to make both small and complex applications with a minumum of effort, and maximum reusablility. In our business time is money, and not being quick enough means loosing your client.
Fuel is here to stay, if only to continue to support our own business. Fuel is a community driven framework, everyone can chip in too make it even beter then it already is. We are not backed by a commercial company like many other frameworks, most of them with their own agenda.
We're working very hard on 2.0 at the moment, which will introduce even more modularity and separation then we can offer for 1.x, which will support multiple applications in a single installation, and which will make it a lot easier to include third-party libraries. It will also be fully unit tested, through travis-ci.
There is a new community website on the way, which will centralize all documentation, an API browser, a snippit system to paste pieces of code, tutorials, tips and tricks and a repository of ready-made packages that you can install through the oil commandline.
Pop into our IRC channel (#fuelphp) if you want to have a chat about it, or ask the opinion of other users present.
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