General questions about frameworks [closed]

Question

Ok so I've been programming in PHP for several years now. I always enjoyed building content systems from the ground-up for practice (forums, blogs, comics, general CMSs etc), however in the past few months I have come to the conclusion I am focusing too much time in doing redundant work like building the base content system every time - fetching information from databases, making the basic layout actually work before bringing any valuable content management to it, etc. Now, im aware of development frameworks such as Zend, CakePHP, etc; but I've always failed to work with them to my satisfaction, and seemed to give up on them rather quickly.

So my questions are:

• How customizable are those frameworks? Can I really get full freedom with them once I learn to use them properly and get to work on actual features instead of wasting weeks on getting a simple base ground up and running?
• How much can I write my own functions for doing stuff in the background?
• Are the results usually fast? Or do the frameworks provide slow and heavy code?
• How intuitive is it to really get them working in my favor and how easy is it to get past the basics nd working with what's really important?

I'd love any insights in this subject. Also I'd love to know if any of you have any preferred frameworks to work with. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

How customizable are those frameworks? Can I really get full freedom with them once I learn to use them properly and get to work on actual features instead of wasting weeks on getting a simple base ground up and running?

It depends. If you get a framework that have everything included you'll spend time to find out the right way to use it. One approach I could recommend is to get a micro framework and to add everything you need by yourself. I. e. you get microframework like Slim or Glue, that provide routing, add you favourite ORM like propel, doctrine, red bean or Pear DB, add your favorite view engine like smarty, twig or anithing else, add Zend modules that you need in your application or Pear classes, add third party tools. This is a longer, but more flexible approach.

How much can I write my own functions for doing stuff in the background?

This method allows your to write everything that you cannot find ready for your work.

Are the results usually fast? Or do the frameworks provide slow and heavy code?

Thus performance completely depends on you. It does not much depend on the factors that you cannot control.

How intuitive is it to really get them working in my favor and how easy is it to get past the basics nd working with what's really important?

It depends on the complexity of your planned project. You can add parts as you need more functionality.