NYCPHP Meetup

[David Merryweather]

Ben,

We went from hand rolled sites to CakePHP and have had very good success.
Took us about 5 days to get up to speed.  We do a lot of outsource work with
firms in the US, India and Ukraine and they have all really enjoyed working
with CakePHP.  Most of our clients don't care as long as it works and its
fast.

The best part about the Cake framework (or any MVC Rails-Like framework) is
it writes itself from your business logic.  If you're a programmer first and
not an architect this may seem foreign but if you build your data and
process relationships first, develop your business domain as a system of
data/process silos, then a MVC based framework really helps to keep thing in
line.  We document in UML and the MVC design pattern (and CakePHP) fit well.

A side benefit of having this type of organized structure is the data
defines the design.  For data silos, the relationships of the data is what
generates your SQL calls.  Your need to hand write complex Many-to-Many SQL
calls will drop dramatically (we still write a few, but not many).

It takes some practice for many programmers because it isn't a natural
transition, but if you can take off the programmer hat and look at your
projects from the problem and solution domain instead, you will find that
these frameworks begin to fit your new thinking.  This is what I have found
watching our programmers and outsource groups make the change over.

On 8/22/07, Ben Sgro (ProjectSkyLine) <ben at projectskyline.com> wrote:
>
>  Hello all,
>
> I know there has been a ton of discussion about frameworks.
>
> So far, I've looked into:
> 1) Cake
> 2) Zend
> 3) Joomla
> 4) Symfony
> 5) Drupal
>
> I've looked at tutorials, books and online how-tos'. Let me explain my
> development environment.
>
> I use smarty templates for all my HTML.  My php is 5w/OOP. I have many
> libraries from everything
> from database access, sitemap creation, html (textboxes, drop downs),
> simple ajax, error logging,
> session handling, (all created by myself) and I use PEAR SOMETIMES as to
> not reinvent the wheel
> for a single project. When I design sites & applications, I have an
> index.php and pass "actions=WHATEVER"
> on the URL to change the action of the program. I dont use seperate files
> for different things EXCEPT for all the libs
> and auxiliary functions. I use SVN for revision control.
>
> I guess I don't see the compelling reason to switch to a framework. Will
> it really speed up my development
> time, even if I have all these libs (and still expanding) already created?
>
> The JSON stuff looks cool, but I dont use that much js and if I do, I just
> write it myself.
>
> Applications I build are powered by PHP/MYSQL, HTML/CSS. There are forms
> to fillout, emailing, login,
> account creation, etc. Some are more complicated than others.
>
> Maybe I could use one framework for making simple websites, and another
> for applications?
>
> I'm really looking for success stories or terros from switching from no
> framework to using one,
> which one, how long it took to be effecient with it, how easy it was to
> expand/modify, the
> userbase and user support, scalability, ease of use, organization of
> codebase, etc. Also,
> I LOVE books, so any that have good paperback book or white
> paper/tutorials is a BIG plus.
>
> Any feedback is helpful, and please provide pros/cons.
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> - Ben
>
>
> Ben Sgro, Chief Engineer
> ProjectSkyLine - Defining New Horizons
> Our company: www.projectskyline.com
> Our products: www.project-contact.com
>
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> individual to whom it is addressed.
>
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-- 
David Merryweather
Vice President of Information Technologies
HighNote Technologies
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