Over the past few years PHP has matured somewhat. Object support continues to grow and more demands for advanced web based applications/software have began putting PHP into a light of it’s own. The once simple scripting language has matured into a powerful OO web scripting arsenal which when combined with the right environments can run with the best of them. Those who push pass the beginners boundary and delve beyond the simple tutorials and basic functionality, use the versatile properties of PHP with good design and OO knowledge who progress, achieve and develop great things and have fun in the process also.
With PHP being applied in new ways and object support it was only a matter of time before there would be an explosion of frameworks on the scene. Not least with such popularity and community support, the Frameworks that are out there are diverse and offer different development facets which can present developers and businesses many advantages in order to build complete professional solutions. With more and more enterprises demanding more from the web, frameworks are becoming more in demand and as such are snowballing in their release cycles to offer a toolkit that many developers and few workplaces can ignore. Many including myself having used frameworks find it difficult to develop without them due to the benefits on offer such as reduced development time and reusable code libraries
As a result of this PHP developers are presented with many frameworks to choose from, which can be a mine field. Although most frameworks are similar offering MVC based designs, some are quite different and vary in depths, versatility and complexity. These aspects should be considered by the developer when choosing the right framework for the job. I would personally recommend trying a few out to see what similarities there are, what suits your needs and what you feel you can mature with. I have tried CakePHP, Symfony and Zend Framework resulting in predominantly the later choice as I feel it suits my requirements as a developer better.
When choosing a framework in my opinion you should not only consider the current state of the framework, but also the support, community and demand for the frameworks you are considering from the business world. If your going to invest time learning, implementing and possibly contributing to a framework, knowing the demand from businesses should be an important factor as this could enhance your career prospects. This demand in turn can help secure a frameworks future as it influences support, training, functionality through corporate recognition.
To help recognise which frameworks are in demand from the job market, I have called in a few graphs of the more popular frameworks to see the differences of demand side by side. I found it interesting and I hope you do to:
Obviously these graphs don’t represent quality in any way, but they should provide a general overview of demands by employment. This can indicate relevance as in most cases (Not All), demand should reflect some the benefits on offer from the framework.
#1 by Carwyn Balch - May 15th, 2010 at 10:45
Im a bit sceptical about the cakephp graph, I suppose its ultra “user friendliness” helps secure it a larger user base, and possible a higher quantity of smaller start-up’s could be using cakePHP, but if you look at the Job postings atm its all about the ZF, it would be interesting to see this graph in 3 years time with the advent of Symphony and ZF 2.0