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The title of this article post "Why Symfony (over framework X)" is highly misleading when all of the arguments that are suggested for choosing Symfony apply als

The title of this article post "Why Symfony (over framework X)" is highly misleading when all of the arguments that are suggested for choosing Symfony apply also to ZF. It is also missing a substantial disclaimer, in that the article is written by the founder of the Symfony Project (if you weren't aware)... Anyway... I'm not going ot argue on the merits of which framework is better, (I use both and think they are both fantastic, but this post is grossly misleading if you are trying to do a subjective comparison). - ZF employs a use at will philosophy. You don't have to use any components or the full stack if you don't want to. - ZF is also used by many large companies. How is this different to Symfony? (clue: It isn't). - ZF also has a huge community, it also has a huge demand for ZF developers. As does Symfony. Both IRC channels have several hundred users connected always. - ZF, also embraces the "don't reinvent the wheel" philosophy (where possible). That's why ZF never tried to implement an ORM. What's the point when Doctrine exists. The only reason it wasn't include in sources is because of mutually exclusive licences. - "Symfony tries to bring innovation to PHP"... This is a little facetious, but ZF also does the same. Symfony and ZF both have a minimum PHP version of 5.3... Both have started to make the lifes of developers as easier as possible with composer/phar. ZF also uses Dependency Injection... Background: I use both Zend Framework and Symfony on the same project. Why? Because they both use the same use at will philosophy... So to say "Why use Symfony" or "Why use Zend Framework" over another framework... is misleading again, because ultimately, you are never restricted to a single framework anyway, you can still pick out individual components... The only real choice you have is which MVC/Application you want to use. Just added this submission also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488582 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488582

lsmith77 14y ago
sure .. they also both use PHP .. what is your point? just because some arguments also apply to ZF2 do not make them non applicable for choosing Symfony2. however he also mentioned a few others, like a huge list of applications migrating to Symfony2. that being said ZF1 at least at more apps based on it than Symfony 1.x. However a list of Drupal, ezPublish, phpBB etc is indeed quite a big shift that Symfony2 managed to pull off. also Symfony2 has had 2 major websites in production for 2 years now and a stable release for over a year leading to 1600+ Bundles (of course I would assume 80% are of questionable quality). I am not aware of any major website today using ZF2 and the number of available Modules is much smaller. the fact that Symnfony2 has a lot more contributors than ZF2 can also not be disputed. the fact that the lead developer of ZF2 says that when creating their new Form API he didnt even look at the API already in Symfony2 also shows that they do in fact have a reinvent the wheel mentality. that being said .. ZF2 does have some philosophical differences that might make it more viable for some users with specific preferences. f.e. ZF2 ships with autowiring and a view layer out of the box. these features require 3rd party Bundles for Symfony2. so my point is .. if you really want to position ZF2 as an alternative to Symfony2 then please focus on what makes ZF2 unique. that would in fact be something productive. listing all the things ZF2 can also do is legitimate as well of course, but can hardly be used as criticism to someone talking about the advantages of Symfony2 unless you can illustrate that the bulk of all PHP frameworks out there provide these capabilities and characteristics.
- polynomial 14y ago
  > "I am not aware of any major website today using ZF2" I was surprised to read this. Since no one has contradicted, I'll presume it's veritable, but surprising nonetheless.
  - lsmith77 14y ago
    Well I want to make sure that nobody assumes that just because I am not aware of any major website using ZF2, that its necessarily a fact. Quite likely nobody in the ZF2 community heard that both opensky.com and exercise.com launched on Symfony2 2 years ago.
  - caseysoftware 14y ago
    ZF2 had it's first formal release this week, so the odds of any site running a release candidate formally are pretty low. After any major release of a framework, there will be a shake out period.. so the long term stability of Symfony is a pretty compelling point to me.
    - lsmith77 14y ago
      well for Symfony2 there were two major sites running on Symfony2 pre alpha versions (2 years ago) .. and several others more in alpha. Obviously these teams had to spend a fair bit if time keeping up with all the BC breaks before the stable release, but it helped a lot in ensuring that Symfony2's stable release was ready for the real world.
      - ericclemmons 14y ago
        We were running pre-alpha back then, too :) The performance over our previous ZF app (practically 1-to-1) was huge! Upgrading was a pain each time, but as a result we all become intimately familiar with the internals and even contributed a fair bit to the core.
debacle 14y ago
Zend Framework has a disastrous cascading dependency issue. If you're only using one tiny piece, you're probably okay, but if you need something higher-level or if you need a few components that work together, chances are you've just added a ton of files to your project, and that any backtrace you look at is going to be entirely useless. Symfony has required PHP 5.3 for a long time. Even in 1.4 many plugins required 5.3 and very often the trunk would break on 5.2 because a 5.3 feature squeeked in and had to be rolled back. Symfony is cutting edge, lean, and for people who want to get maximum productivity out of their time and their LoC. Zend Framework is for people who don't know better.

lsmith77 14y ago

sure .. they also both use PHP .. what is your point? just because some arguments also apply to ZF2 do not make them non applicable for choosing Symfony2. however he also mentioned a few others, like a huge list of applications migrating to Symfony2. that being said ZF1 at least at more apps based on it than Symfony 1.x. However a list of Drupal, ezPublish, phpBB etc is indeed quite a big shift that Symfony2 managed to pull off. also Symfony2 has had 2 major websites in production for 2 years now and a stable release for over a year leading to 1600+ Bundles (of course I would assume 80% are of questionable quality). I am not aware of any major website today using ZF2 and the number of available Modules is much smaller. the fact that Symnfony2 has a lot more contributors than ZF2 can also not be disputed. the fact that the lead developer of ZF2 says that when creating their new Form API he didnt even look at the API already in Symfony2 also shows that they do in fact have a reinvent the wheel mentality. that being said .. ZF2 does have some philosophical differences that might make it more viable for some users with specific preferences. f.e. ZF2 ships with autowiring and a view layer out of the box. these features require 3rd party Bundles for Symfony2. so my point is .. if you really want to position ZF2 as an alternative to Symfony2 then please focus on what makes ZF2 unique. that would in fact be something productive. listing all the things ZF2 can also do is legitimate as well of course, but can hardly be used as criticism to someone talking about the advantages of Symfony2 unless you can illustrate that the bulk of all PHP frameworks out there provide these capabilities and characteristics.

polynomial 14y ago
> "I am not aware of any major website today using ZF2" I was surprised to read this. Since no one has contradicted, I'll presume it's veritable, but surprising nonetheless.
- lsmith77 14y ago
  Well I want to make sure that nobody assumes that just because I am not aware of any major website using ZF2, that its necessarily a fact. Quite likely nobody in the ZF2 community heard that both opensky.com and exercise.com launched on Symfony2 2 years ago.
- caseysoftware 14y ago
  ZF2 had it's first formal release this week, so the odds of any site running a release candidate formally are pretty low. After any major release of a framework, there will be a shake out period.. so the long term stability of Symfony is a pretty compelling point to me.
  - lsmith77 14y ago
    well for Symfony2 there were two major sites running on Symfony2 pre alpha versions (2 years ago) .. and several others more in alpha. Obviously these teams had to spend a fair bit if time keeping up with all the BC breaks before the stable release, but it helped a lot in ensuring that Symfony2's stable release was ready for the real world.
    - ericclemmons 14y ago
      We were running pre-alpha back then, too :) The performance over our previous ZF app (practically 1-to-1) was huge! Upgrading was a pain each time, but as a result we all become intimately familiar with the internals and even contributed a fair bit to the core.

debacle 14y ago

Zend Framework has a disastrous cascading dependency issue. If you're only using one tiny piece, you're probably okay, but if you need something higher-level or if you need a few components that work together, chances are you've just added a ton of files to your project, and that any backtrace you look at is going to be entirely useless. Symfony has required PHP 5.3 for a long time. Even in 1.4 many plugins required 5.3 and very often the trunk would break on 5.2 because a 5.3 feature squeeked in and had to be rolled back. Symfony is cutting edge, lean, and for people who want to get maximum productivity out of their time and their LoC. Zend Framework is for people who don't know better.