Why do I need to use a popular framework?

Question

I\'ve been a PHP developer for many years now, with many tools under my belt; tools that I\'ve either developed myself, or free-to-use solutions that I have learned to trust

Answer 1

Here's another reason not to create your own framework. Linus' Law - "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". In other words, the more people who use a given framework, the more solid and bug-free it is likely to be.

Have you seen how many web frameworks there are for Java? Back in the day, it was fashionable for any half-decent developer/architect to write their own custom web framework. And at the end of the day, 95% of them looked like a custom implementation of Struts (the most popular Java web framework at the time). So they basically created a Struts clone that was: 1) proprietary; and 2) not as well documented and tested.

Let's face it - writing our own customer framework is fun, but what happens next? It becomes a maintenance burden to keep up with the framework yourself (or the poor soul who replaces you). And maintaining software is much, much more costly, especially when it comes to custom frameworks. Is the company in business to solve domain problems or in the business of maintaining frameworks?

I forget who said it, but I once heard a great quote - "The first rule to creating your own framework is: don't". Somebody else has probably gone through the effort of doing so and probably done the same work you would have done. Save yourself the time, effort, and testing.