Comments on Coding Aloud: How Zend_Framework Is Losing The Wrong War

Based on my experience, independently of using wha...

2009-03-12T15:28:00.000+02:00

Based on my experience, independently of using what one consider a 'good' programming language or framework, or using the 'bad' one, is that both have the 'good' parts in it and knowing how to make use of those 'good' parts will help you make the good app.

see: javascript: the good parts

so maybe we should use: PHP, the good parts

i particularly don't like 'enterprisy' things, aks MS and JAVA solutions, i believe we can develop enterprise apps without MS.NET or Java and oracle and sqlserver

>> The world of web development has grown *...

2008-10-02T17:18:00.000+03:00

>> The world of web development has grown *huge*; there is enough room for RoR and ZF and hundreds of other frameworks out there, for that matter

I like this attitude very much.

Here is my 2cents' worth based on my experience.

Some say: "PHP has no standard.. whatever." Actually, it is J2EE that lacks standards. It made me burn-out easily.

For the same functionalities, it is easier to work with PHP.

Concerning Rails, we/PHP communities can wait 2 to 3 years. That's the minium time RoR community will need to sort out hte deployment etc.

Hi all.

I'm using ZF 1.5 and PHP5 for the f...

2008-07-22T18:55:00.000+03:00

Hi all.

I'm using ZF 1.5 and PHP5 for the first time on a real application, after years of work on databases, Java programming etc. I have to use PHP for this project because my customer requested it, but that's fine with me, because I'm finding that PHP5 and ZF are a great combination. The ZF components seem to be pretty good so far, although they could do with a lot more examples in the documentation.

As for competing with Ruby On Rails, why bother? RoR does its thing very well, but it's not doing the same thing as ZF. RoR looks OK so long as you stay inside the playpen, but ZF seems to allow you much more flexibility and freedom to exploit existing tools and platforms.

Meanwhile, ZF is a heck of a lot easier (and faster!) than JSP/Struts etc, but still offers a good MVC approach to application design, without locking you into a rigid framework. So if you want to compare things, compare it with the Java world.

As for me, ZF has finally persuaded me that PHP can be used for grown-up web applications, with far less pain than Java has always caused me!

The problem is not the framework is the language. ...

2008-06-06T18:47:00.000+03:00

The problem is not the framework is the language. PHP code base is a 15 years old kid project. There's no kind of standardization and it's full of limitations (object oriented programming, cgi, half-implemented functionality/core-extensions, deprecations, multibyte string handling, threading, ...). Seriously PHP can't fight against any other dynamic language and the same applies to frameworks built on it. I've been programming in PHP for about 8 years and still waiting the day they fix/implement everything is already on other languages.

bah! I used ROR for a year after being a procedura...

2008-03-31T23:19:00.000+03:00

bah! I used ROR for a year after being a procedural php programmer for two years. I ve now wholeheartedly moved back to PHP 5 and ZF.

they're two diff tools. ROR is good at what it does, ZF is good at everything, and if it aint, you can extend it. or ignore it.

Ruby is a lovely language tho...but if you hit a prob in ZF, or have to integrate some existing app, then you can just bung in some php filler and get on with the job, rather than fannying around for ages trying to work out what esoteric convention rails uses.

but i do love ruby ;-)

@Ryan Heneise
Programming in Ruby is like li...

2008-03-25T20:41:00.000+02:00
@Ryan Heneise
Programming in Ruby is like listening to a beautiful woman speak Portugese - it's smooth, eloquent, and desirable.

I cant but smile when i read that. Are you portuguese? I can't but just see the closeness in your comparison. Though I dont speak portuguese but I have heard the language being spoken by women and even if they are not beautiful, its kinda singsong like. Good post man and tx for making me smile.

I will love a blogspot like this where we can talk about MySQL and PostGre.

You have some good points, but I think that the re...

2008-03-25T18:01:00.000+02:00
You have some good points, but I think that the real reason that Ruby and Rails attracts the developers that it does is not because of how many lines of code it takes to write a blog, or how many tools are available, or how easy it is to talk to a database.

Developers love Rails because of the Ruby language. "Web development that doesn't hurt" is a direct result of Ruby's sexy shimmeryness. Programming in Ruby is like listening to a beautiful woman speak Portugese - it's smooth, eloquent, and desirable.

"we" I mean all of us wu thinks PHP is not as cool...

2008-03-20T20:20:00.000+02:00
"we" I mean all of us wu thinks PHP is not as cool as some other languages and frameworks. 2 to 3 years ago, PHP'ers accused Java of being too HUGE, I wonder what these same people will say now? Despite the fact that Java as a whole is HUGE u only need to look at some specif points to see how well organised Java is. With the three major platforms (j2me, j2se and j2ee), java beats any language with organisation and standardization.

U can learn J2SE and stay there, if u love WEB, j2ee is for u and if u love mobile and ltd devices j2me is 4 u. That is what standard can do, it brings arrangement, it curbs cancerous growth. When growth is not checked it bcomes cancer.

That is y java lovers tends to love php. Have u noticed that support for Ruby on netbeans beats that of php? it's because the people Zend, Smarty, "frendmarty"! and unless u have not noticed, netbeans is d IDE of choice.

Standard is d only thing that php lacks, give it one and RoR is history!

@don:

(who's 'we' and what do you mean by ...

2008-03-20T11:59:00.000+02:00
@don:

(who's 'we' and what do you mean by 'take it from me' ?)

Maybe lack of standard is a good thing. I mean, look at IBM PC. It killed its Apple2/Mac/Amiga/ST competitors which were all made by a single company. While everything released on Mac (hardware wise) had to be approved by Apple, IBM PC & compatibles hardware was manufactured by everybody everywhere with just applying the same hardware schematics. Remember when drivers were actually TSRs?

So, I don't know if lack of standard, and openness of mixed variables (catch $e) is good or bad, it does allow a wide variety of applications and frameworks to be made.

Heck, it's the artist, not the tools.

I agree that it would be best if PEAR had something like Java procedure for approval, but maybe that would slow. things. to. a. halt. PEAR is developing much faster than JDK. I wonder how CPAN manages this with over 12,000 packages.

That's my 2 cents.

@alphafoobar as you can actually define the typ...

2008-03-20T11:25:00.000+02:00
@alphafoobar as you can actually define the type of the exception.

Well what is try catch if u cant define ur own exceptions. What I am saying is the way it is implemented? Got try and read error handling in java and php will stink in ur ears.

The problem with languages like php is lack of control or standard. Let the php community come up with a standard of some sort. Before any class can be approved in java it has to go thru some process, that is what we are saying, standardize this thing and it becomes an appealing language, ZF is doing a good work, but to me, they aint different from microsoft in any way. Take it from me, if you give php over to Zend, it will become another visual studio.

@Don - PHP like many other languages, has a try ca...

2008-03-19T21:59:00.000+02:00
@Don - PHP like many other languages, has a try catch block. PHP's implementation is better than some - as you can actually define the type of the exception.

I'm quite happy with the functionality of exception handling in PHP - you define an exception, put in some try catch blocks and the exception can be handled...

What issue do you have with it Don? And have you considered raising it as a bug in the php defect register? http://bugs.php.net/

@ john wells Listen, I did PHP for a LOOONG ...

2008-03-19T19:32:00.000+02:00
@ john wells Listen, I did PHP for a LOOONG time...but compared to Ruby (and many other languages), it's a downright crappy language with a serious heap of awful libraries (I'm looking at you, PEAR). ZF might be a good framework (I have no ZF experience, so I can't say), but no matter how well it is designed, it will always be a house that's built on sand.

If you are coming from a java/j2ee backgroung to php, the first thing you notice a very sloppy error handling technique. I love my
try {
} catch {
}
so much i tried it in php, poof not working as it should. Another thing about php is lack of standard. There are so many php libraries out there all doing the same thing and in the php framework, u get more than two functions doing the same thing, why that? what happened to KISS (Keep It Short and Simple)?

RoR is better than php. I have not tried the ZF but wot is d use, its built of the sloppy php.

I dont do RoR neither do I do php, I just tried them both out to design a community website. And my findings? DONT START PHP IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY STARTED.

Hi Gil,
I'd like to check out your Framework! I...

2008-03-19T04:43:00.000+02:00
Hi Gil,
I'd like to check out your Framework! I'm a Java developer (professionally) but am engaged in PHP projects on the side. I've taken a look at CakePHP, which does speed development time, though I find it rather rigid.

What I want is a framework that is lightweight and allows prototypes to be developed in 60 seconds... then the bells and whistles can be applied.

If you have such a framework - perhaps the international community would benefit from it's release!

There's no doubt that j2ee and ZF are much more...

2008-03-17T18:27:00.000+02:00
There's no doubt that j2ee and ZF are much more powerful than RoR

Ummm....blink....ok, whatever you say. There are a *lot* of people who would disagree with you...particularly regarding ZF, but likely also about j2ee as wel.

Listen, I did PHP for a LOOONG time...but compared to Ruby (and many other languages), it's a downright crappy language with a serious heap of awful libraries (I'm looking at you, PEAR). ZF might be a good framework (I have no ZF experience, so I can't say), but no matter how well it is designed, it will always be a house that's built on sand.

@Gil: That's what CakePHP is for ;) Besides, I've ...

2008-03-17T13:05:00.000+02:00
@Gil: That's what CakePHP is for ;) Besides, I've actually seen so many RoR developers switch to CakePHP. They've found value in their RoR experience, but they understand that you can't keep building RoR apps; Rails just doesn't give you the flexibility you need to build something great, Wikipedia-scale.

@Steve: that's exactly the point! There's no doubt...

2008-03-17T10:15:00.000+02:00
@Steve: that's exactly the point! There's no doubt that j2ee and ZF are much more powerful than RoR. It's just that ... RoR is more practical. It gets the job done easier, and is suitable for quite a lot of webapps. You have described a way to implement ActiveRecord with ZF, which sounds quite complicated. Remember it's the first thing you learn in RoR :)

@Musher: I'm a php'er as well. I haven't moved to ruby, because I'm sooo comfortable in php. If it works, why would I break it? :) But I think the same thing can be said between hardcore perl cgi coders and php coders :) you get the point ;)

@Akash: yeah, ZF is not aiming to be a complete solution, rather a framework that you can use any bits and pieces of that you want. This is very nice indeed. I just think it's time for ZF to do something before all the new developers will use Ruby because of it's ease, and neglect PHP/ZF.

While the ActiveRecord implementation in RoR is se...

2008-03-17T02:39:00.000+02:00
While the ActiveRecord implementation in RoR is sexy, the same thing can be achieved with judicious (and concise) use of the Zend Session Namespace and Propel. I am writing an app doing just this, and in conjunction with the XSL classes in PHP5.x, Zend Framework puts rediculous power in the hands of developers in terms of data exchange.

RoR is awesome, but it's just not powerful enough to gracefully and quickly meld several different existing architectures at once. When a client insists on using his existing .NET platform, and another client insists on J2EE, PHP (with help from the ZF toolkit) is the best tool out there.

Hi Gil,

I think made a very valid point in ...

2008-03-16T12:43:00.000+02:00
Hi Gil,

I think made a very valid point in there - ZF is still missing some 'glue', because it contains all the ingredients but doesn't offer pre-packaged solutions or default set-ups, [yet]. There are plenty of guidelines in the documentation, but these guidelines require plenty of reading and getting-to-know.

Perhaps this is a good thing ... ?

I'm pretty confident that several developers out there, who are doing this getting-to-know, and before long, there will be some competing frameworks built on-top-of ZF.

I'm going to give it a go myself, even if the results only ever get used within my own projects. Hopefully my efforts, and those of other zf users, will follow the lead of ZF with high coding/testing standards.

So, perhaps Zend are expending all their efforts on building robust building blocks, safe in the knowledge that the polish will come of its own accord ... maybe that makes them lazy!

When it comes to PEAR, I really can't implicitly trust PEAR modules, because the modules vary wildly in code quality and design. I'm relieved that there's a more cohesive, robust alternative now.

Wil, many thanks and good luck with v1.5, I'm looking forward to upgrading tomorrow. Bring on those 'partials'!

Amir

I think musher's mention of "standalone" sums it u...

2008-03-16T11:28:00.000+02:00
I think musher's mention of "standalone" sums it up. Zend Framework is not out to be the next Rails. If you notice how each of them operate, Rails is designed for consumer, retail-level developers, while the Zend Framework is ideal for enterprise deployment among, well, anything.

If you put together a CodeIgniter application, you drop in an entire copy of the CI system structure, and you build your application inside the system structure (well, the application section of it, anyway). With Zend, on the other hand, you can build your application inside the ZF-directed structure, or you can do something entirely different and just use its components independently.

For example, if you want to work with GData in PHP, the best way (and about the only way) is to pull in a Zend Framework GData component - even if you're using another framework (Cake, CI, Symfony etc.).

As a result, the Zend Framework is just a little more like PEAK than like CakePHP. This blog post on using the zend framework in other frameworks pretty much sums it up. No matter what you're using, "just add Zend."

I'm a techie, I love PHP and I don't mind Ruby.
2008-03-16T10:50:00.000+02:00
I'm a techie, I love PHP and I don't mind Ruby.

I kind of got bored with Rails. Sure I can make a simple site quickly and easily. But that doesn't really appeal to me. I like ZF because it's not all or nothing. I've been using some of the more simple things (Logger, Registry) from ZF standalone in other projects and it's great.

Like Wil said, I'm a developer and I like the bottom up approach.

The other thing about the ZF I like is, I use it as a great example of how to do things. Sure I could look into Rails, but I use PHP day to day. Want to learn about the registry pattern, read about it. Want to learn how to implement a registry pattern, look at the Zend Framework.

Woah! I'm honored (no sarcasm, I really am honored...

2008-03-16T10:26:00.000+02:00
Woah! I'm honored (no sarcasm, I really am honored.)

When I wrote the post last night I was very upset at ZF. If you read between the lines, you notice that I favor php over ruby. It just makes me sad that the new mindset of making products as fast as possible just passes through and ZF not picking up on it.

I'm totally waiting for Monday. I keep checking Zend_Framework and slides from conferences. I'm sure one day ZF will kick ass and I'm expecting it to. Hey, it's all a matter of propaganda, right? :)

Cheers!

Wow, where to begin? Let me just get it out of the...

2008-03-16T07:16:00.000+02:00
Wow, where to begin? Let me just get it out of the way first that I lead the ZF project at Zend- that's probably a disclaimer that has some relevance to this discussion. :)
Next, I totally respect your opinions, and it sounds like RoR is really appealing to you. I can see why- I spent some time developing web applications in Rails, and it certainly does have its strong points. Many of which are clearly unmatched in ZF.
But I have to say that your characterization of "Zend waging war" with Rails or any framework- PHP or otherwise- simply isn't accurate. We aren't out to beat any other framework- most definitely not to the point of undermining another framework or their userbase. The world of web development has grown *huge*; there is enough room for RoR and ZF and hundreds of other frameworks out there, for that matter. We have a very different design philosophy from Rails, and- while we have learnt a lot from the Rails project- I would say that we're really addressing a different mindset in the development community.
We believe in using at will, building from the bottom up, convention and configuration, and opinionated software built with an unopinionated framework. Rails has a very different take on a lot of these points, which makes writing a blog app in 58 lines possible. And IMO it is obvious that Rails has built out their vision much more than ZF. No surprise there- AFAIC tell our vision will take a lot more time to build out fully- if there is even a concept of 'completion' for ZF- and Rails has been around longer. All the same, with our bottom up strategy a lot of developer seem to have found it useful in its current state. ;)
Of course, this is only addressing ZF WRT RoR. Arguments with similar spirit and different content could be made for ZF WRT [insert any web app framework here].
As far as feeling perfect goes: I wish! Man, would that make my job a lot easier. We have identified a few key areas to fix in 1.5, including the first hour of the ZF experience. But even with 1.5 rolling out Monday, we are already planning the next version to tackle the hundreds of issues and features our community has brought to our attention. This is probably the characterization that seems the most 'out there' to me. Even if we did feel the laurels were sufficient cushioning, nobody- least of all ourselves- would be letting us sit on them.
You seem to be an intelligent, well versed developer with strong opinions. I encourage you to take a look at 1.5 on Monday to see if you agree with our direction as expressed in 1.5 a bit more. But then again, ZF may just not be the right framework for you and/or your development needs. And that's exactly why it's such a great thing that we all have lots of frameworks to choose from!
There are some technical points that I'd like to address- like the whole monolithic package thing- but this comment is already WAY too long.

Best of luck in everything.
,Wil

Comments on Coding Aloud: How Zend_Framework Is Losing The Wrong War

Based on my experience, independently of using wha...

>> The world of web development has grown *...

Hi all.

I'm using ZF 1.5 and PHP5 for the f...

The problem is not the framework is the language. ...

bah! I used ROR for a year after being a procedura...

@Ryan Heneise
Programming in Ruby is like li...

You have some good points, but I think that the re...

"we" I mean all of us wu thinks PHP is not as cool...

@don:

(who's 'we' and what do you mean by ...

@alphafoobar as you can actually define the typ...

@Don - PHP like many other languages, has a try ca...

@ john wells Listen, I did PHP for a LOOONG ...

Hi Gil,
I'd like to check out your Framework! I...

There's no doubt that j2ee and ZF are much more...

@Gil: That's what CakePHP is for ;) Besides, I've ...

@Steve: that's exactly the point! There's no doubt...

While the ActiveRecord implementation in RoR is se...

Hi Gil,

I think made a very valid point in ...

I think musher's mention of "standalone" sums it u...

Woah! I'm honored (no sarcasm, I really am honored...

Wow, where to begin? Let me just get it out of the...

Comments on Coding Aloud: How Zend_Framework Is Losing The Wrong War

Based on my experience, independently of using wha...

>> The world of web development has grown *...

Hi all.I'm using ZF 1.5 and PHP5 for the f...

The problem is not the framework is the language. ...

bah! I used ROR for a year after being a procedura...

@Ryan HeneiseProgramming in Ruby is like li...

You have some good points, but I think that the re...

"we" I mean all of us wu thinks PHP is not as cool...

@don: (who's 'we' and what do you mean by ...

@alphafoobar as you can actually define the typ...

@Don - PHP like many other languages, has a try ca...

@ john wells Listen, I did PHP for a LOOONG ...

Hi Gil,I'd like to check out your Framework! I...

There's no doubt that j2ee and ZF are much more...

@Gil: That's what CakePHP is for ;) Besides, I've ...

@Steve: that's exactly the point! There's no doubt...

While the ActiveRecord implementation in RoR is se...

Hi Gil,I think made a very valid point in ...

I think musher's mention of "standalone" sums it u...

Woah! I'm honored (no sarcasm, I really am honored...

Wow, where to begin? Let me just get it out of the...

Hi all.

I'm using ZF 1.5 and PHP5 for the f...

@Ryan Heneise
Programming in Ruby is like li...

@don:

(who's 'we' and what do you mean by ...

Hi Gil,
I'd like to check out your Framework! I...

Hi Gil,

I think made a very valid point in ...