I have been thinking about the added value of using a good development framework and here are my top 10 benefits of using symfony as a development framework vs traditional program development. I won't be talking here about the license, which is open source MIT (which is great) but specifically of the programming and features aspects.
Rapid Application Development
Write better code faster. I know it sounds too good to be true but this is definitely the most obvious benefit of using a good application development framework.
Promote good code design and OOP
Using the inbuilt MVC makes the code easier to maintain and design. The symfony documentation is full of guidelines to make code easy to use during the course of the various development steps. Also, it's built on PHP5 and is fully object-oriented. This again promotes good code design and reusability.
Concentrate on the essential
When building a web application, you often find yourself doing the same things over and over again. OK, the table names change from one module to the next, as does the data structure but the logic behind managing objects is mostly the same. So, why waste precious time on the standard "common" code, when you could be spending it concentrating on the much more rewarding essentials: specific business logic, security, usability, ... since those are the things which in effect rake in the money and differenciate your product from the next?
Encourage proper code documentation
Because the framework handles most of what's happening behind the scenes, it becomes much easier to document code as you go along. And, symfony integrates phpdoc by default.
Provide different environments
Ever found yourself thinking "Gosh, I wish I could just switch to development for a second just to see the detailed error" or "I wonder how this will work in production?". Well, symfony provides inbuilt mechanisms which allow you to simply switch from one to the other, without ever disrupting the actual production environment. This also promotes testing and thus application stableness and scalibility.
Increase security
symfony provides mechanisms, tips and suggestions for output escaping, preventing SQL injection, and CSRF attacks. You really need to read the documentation from cover to cover to take full advantage of all the options provided by the framework, but it's a worthwile read!
Abstract from database
Using a database abstraction layer and ORM makes the process of accessing data completely transparent. You no longer have to worry about actually accessing the database to create, retrieve, update and delete data. All the internals are hidden. You just access the objects via the ORM layer that sits above the database abstraction layer and that's it. Did someone say KISS? :)
Manage credentials
Managing credentials is dead-easy as symfony provides a simple plugin that does all the nitty gritty behind-the-scenes work for you!
Internationalize and localize
I guess this is probably one of the most important issues, certainly for European customers. Again, symfony creators have made this one of their key features and internationalization and localization is made easy by in-built ready-to-use mechanisms.
Join a living community
symfony is big, and getting bigger. It seems everyone today will agree one of the major advantages of open source is the community that builds around the project and provides support, ideas and new features to an already growing project. Neat.
Well, those are the top 10 I could think of. Of course, there are many other things like a.o. integrated Javascript frameworks (scriptaculous...), various helpers and simplified AJAX development.
What benefits do you associate with using a development framework (or symfony more specifically)?
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