> I was apprehensive when I started, and a half decade ago this codebase would be an unmaintainable mess, but I'm finding it a joy to work in: there are few lay

> I was apprehensive when I started, and a half decade ago this codebase would be an unmaintainable mess, but I'm finding it a joy to work in: there are few layers of abstraction, not a single line of code is wasted, and when something goes wrong there's no magic obfuscating the true problem. I've "rolled my own" quite a few times this way, with web frameworks and ORMs/query engines, and while I agree it feel that way, I would add the caveat it feels that way at first. Eventually, whether that's 6 months or 6 years, you end up cursing the framework because either you're spending a significant chunk of time implementing features that you didn't need but now do, and would have either been included in a framework when you started, or you would have just been able to upgrade your framework to a newer version to get it. Unless the project has a very tight scope, the eventual drift in needs causes friction when it comes up against the very targeted capabilities of what you designed for yourself because it only implemented what you needed when you wrote it. Writing a web framework is useful and fun, as is writing an ORM. At least for the first 75% of features. People should do it, if for no other reason it makes assessing other ones for whether they are suitable for your needs much more easy and accurate as your knowledge increases. But 5 years from now when you (or whoever inherits it) are realizing there's a security issue you need to patch in your home rolled framework, and you aren't quite done patching the security or performance problem that was found last week, you might reassess how good of a choice rolling your own was. Symfony and Laraval might be slow, but there's a slew of other PHP frameworks to choose from that range from full stack to micro frameworks[1], and those probably deserve a look for anyone in the same position considering the same move. Maybe rolling your own still comes out looking good, but it's not something I think should be attempted in production without quite a bit of consideration as to the eventual implications. 1: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r18&hw=ph&test=fortune&l=zik073-f https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r18&hw=...