Opinions on frameworks

[23.12.2012]

I'm about to start working on a new project, and I was thinking of actually using a framework this time around. Although most online resources agree that a framework is the better way of doing things, some book authors said that they preferred writing all the code from scratch. So how would you go about this? Do you recommend me to use a framework (I'm thinking Kohana right now), or is writing everything from the ground up just as good? Thanks in advance!

[boen_robot]

Personally, I'd reccomend using Framework(s) that let you pick stuff from them, and use it without forcing you to use everything that's in the framework. The best example of this is the Zend Framework. You can use Zend_Mail or Zend_Db without having to use the MVC classes. Other frameworks tend to integrate the mailing and DB aspects with the rest of the classes, so that you basically end up construcing a whole site in a few minutes... but then you have to modify the framework itself if you want a kind of control not presented by the framework.

[wirehopper]

I built a custom framework using Zend Framework as a library as boen_robot suggested, however, I've decided using Zend as a framework would help me build a better application and site because of the i18n and l10n. After wrestling with it for awhile, I finally found a book I like: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Zend-Fram...=zend+frameworkI think it's better to use a framework than code from scratch because there are lots of good frameworks out there. Maybe a good test (if you have time), is to try to build a page, with a form, with a few frameworks and see which one is the easiest to work with while still meeting all your core requirements. If time is a consideration, I agree with boen_robot that using an existing framework as a library is a good compromise.Good luck.

[23.12.2012]

Thanks a lot for your responses! I've given Zend a try (not the first one), but it simply doesn't suit me (or I don't suit it, I can't say for sure). And that's how I've got to Kohana. The documentation sucks big time, but I've found this tutorial which seems to have me up and running quite efficiently.