1. NiKo October 31st, 2008
   5:05 PDT

   The end of symfony? Are you kidding? To me symfony has never been so serious and powerful, 1.2 will be a great release. And it’s still simple if you take the time to *read* the documentation!
2. Oncle Tom October 31st, 2008
   5:37 PDT

   I think you choose a product depending on its features and after, your ability to use it.

   Sure symfony is more complicated than a subset of functions. It’s a great tool for leveraging your knowledge and that is the real question to be considered.

   When I look to other frameworks, I really feel more comfortable with symfony. It’s a question of habits, will and capacities.
3. Mark Quezada October 31st, 2008
   9:25 PDT

   @NiKo: I know it’s not the end of Symfony itself. And you’re right… Symfony has never been so powerful. I’m asking if it’s the end of an approachable Symfony. Will it simply be another tool that has too high a learning curve for new users? I know you’re a seasoned Symfony user, but what about new adopters who don’t have as much experience under their belt? As Symfony grows and matures to be more powerful, it also needs to be simpler so that it’s still easily approachable.

   Most of the documentation that’s “simple” is the documentation that Francois wrote for Symfony 1.0 that has been updated for Symfony 1.1/1.2.

   @Oncle Tom: I agree that you need to evaluate a framework’s feature set before you choose to use it, but I don’t think it’s true that you put your “ability to use it” secondly. Being able to use a framework comfortably depends not only on your skill level but also with the ease at which you can become proficient with it. My concern is that as Symfony becomes more powerful it becomes harder for people to become proficient with it… and that causes a higher barrier to entry for new users.
4. NiKo October 31st, 2008
   21:19 PDT

   I don’t want to talk in the name of Fabien, but he wrote a lot of the Book, you know. A lot. Ant he’s still doing so for the new version.

   François did a great job too by promoting and documenting symfony, contributing plugins, etc. He had sometimes great ideas, sometimes not, as every human around here. But please, don’t think symfony’s ergonomy and ease of use is the only work of François. That’s just simply not true, and not fair for Fabien who did an amazing work on this topic, but outside the light.
5. stefan November 1st, 2008
   7:36 PDT

   I don’t agree with your stance on Agavi. I was at the IPC in Mainz last week, and met 4 or 5 active Agavi developers. Even though they’re not as big as symfony right now, they are building momentum again and I think Agavi is the upcoming most serious “competitor” for symfony (leaving Zend Framework out of the picture right now, as that is a completely different framework).

   Having said that, I think that if you are worried about symfony becoming harder to understand for new developers, and you think the current effort with the big amount of new tutorials and documentation is not enough, then stand up, join the symfony-docs mailinglist, and start documenting!

   Sure, I am an experienced symfony developer, so I’ll be used to it. But I really think that getting to know symfony is still definitely not a very hard thing. Sure, there is a steep learning curve, but that’s always been there. And with the big stream of tutorials recently being posted and the work Fabien is putting into updating the book, I think it will still be possible for people to learn it. But, as with earlier versions of symfony, it will take some effort. The learning curve is steep, but it has always been like that. And the power you get in return is amazing.

   It is always a shame to loose someone as an active contributor for a project, but as I also posted on my own weblog, it’s not the end of the world. The project will live on.
6. Mark Quezada November 1st, 2008
   9:16 PDT

   @NiKo: I’m sure Fabien had much to do with the documentation, and I hope he continues to do so, but with more emphasis on it upfront (and less as if it were an afterthought). I’m sure the Symfony community will continue to grow and hopefully more people will take on the challenge of creating great tutorials and writing easy-to-follow documentation (as you yourself have done).

   @stefan: Respectfully, I must say that whether or not you agree with my stance is irrelevant. Agavi may be an up and coming major player again sometime in the distant future but it’s foolish to say that they are a serious alternative to Symfony today (or even that they will be in the next couple of years). With that said though, I really do hope they become a viable alternative to Symfony since that’ll only push the Symfony community to make Symfony better.

   Yes, the Symfony Project will live on. Like NiKo said, Symfony has never been as serious or powerful as it is today. I just hope that there’s an awareness in the community that without the straightforward and well thought-out documentation that brought us here, Symfony wouldn’t be what it is today. And you’re completely right, joining the symfony-docs mailing list is a great way to ensure that we have that same great resource in the future!
7. Abdulhakim November 9th, 2008
   12:24 PST

   Well , I really agree that symfony is a complex framework. the documentation is great but implementation is another thing.
   i installed it, i tried changing file name and function as directed by the book and still could not get what i want. i know it is rich cos i have seen a project powered with symfony yet starting out with symfony is really a big deal!
8. Sid May 2nd, 2009
   12:47 PDT

   There are so many good tutorials and how to articles on Symfony out there. What do you need to do with Symfony? Just Google it. Someone somewhere has documented it.

   The number of Symfony plugins are growing daily. I have never been able to build a website system as quickly and elegantly than ever before!

   @Abdulhakim Learning any full stack framework is a big deal. Especially if you do not have any experience with other similar framework.

   The concepts are similar with other full stacked frameworks: ORM, MVC, template, controller, action, cache, routing, etc.

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