Thread

http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2012/09/moving-on

What does this mean for CI development? Will development move forward unhindered? Any thoughts?

Just read Phil’s blog post. If I had to guess, and it is a guess, the CI developer team will be scrambling for someone or someones to replace Phil.  That alone will slow development of CI 3.0.
On the other hand, the new license agreement for 3.0 will mean a decrease in the number of users.
I don’t find that fact appetizing, but I think it’s true.

Like Phil, I too am looking at FuelPHP, mostly for it’s small footprint and additional features. 
The problem for me is that my work is all in-house proprietary and so pretty much limited to CI unless they (my clients) are willing to fund a big re-write to another framework, which is another reason I’m looking at other frameworks.  I’ll still using CI, but future clients may want more than it offers. Good framework, limited by what I have time to extend to meet client needs.  As a training vehicle CI is, bar-none, the best around.  If CI would add more optional packages (Sparks??), it would allow them to grow, so long as they avoid the trend of other frameworks for adding everything to the original distribution.  I like the fact that CI doesn’t suffer from code bloat.

CI is a light framework. This feature is more important than other IMHO. If you work in a webagency it’s important developing fast.

I hope CI3 will be released soon 😊

And this statement is in response to? Phil leaving doesn’t make it any heavier then it is today.

Is there a list somewhere of whom the community members are, such as Phil? Seems to me that Phil was the most outspoken, but with him now moving onto bigger and better things I’m curious to see what happens.  I know a few (perhaps more) are miffed about the whole license thing with 3.0. 

Have given some thought to finding another framework for a few other reasons, but for now I’ll be sticking with CI.

Is there a list somewhere of whom the community members are, such as Phil?

https://github.com/EllisLab
Don’t think there is a way to only see CI devs.

Thanks for the link.  I recognize some of the names from various different things I’ve seen for CI, but I don’t believe that many of them were as involved as Phil was.  Think he’ll be missed on CI.

I don’t believe Phil has really been very active over the last few months (according to git commits/pulls/forum posts/etc).  Narfbg looks like he has been doing most of the heavy lifting.  If you look at the number of projects Phil is involved in, this doesn’t really come as a surprise.  It’s hard to be that involved in so many projects, stay on top of them AND do paying work to make a living.  There comes a point where you need to just let go of the extra stuff weighing you down so you can concentrate on being productive with what you really want to do - or with what pays the bills.  Volunteer positions make that hard.

Yes he will be missed, but I don’t think this will have much to do with slowing down CI’s progress.

Valid point, but it does seem like he was pushing really hard to get version 3 out.  Now granted that’s because I follow him on twitter and really don’t follow many of the other devs.

Either way it will be very interesting to see what happens with version 3 and seeing if people move to it.

Either way it will be very interesting to see what happens with version 3 and seeing if people move to it.

I think CI will have a large user base of entry level devs, but it seems to have lost it’s luster among most everyone else. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a CI related blog post written in the last 90 days that didn’t mention how good another framework is compared to CI. Nettuts+, which had great CI tutorials, hasn’t had one since the last, when the author seemed to get blasted in the comments for not writing about one of the “better / more modern” frameworks.

I really like working with CI, and if the team wasn’t so worried about breaking backwards compatibility, I think it could attract more devs. What I like most about CI is that nearly everything makes sense. I like the routing, the active record, and form validation. I’ve developed code that works so well for me that I barely have to look at the user guide anymore.

Maybe Phil leaving is a good thing. He seemed arrogant and rude to people. I never really liked him. He’s obviously a experienced dev, but there’s others ...

Brian - For me CI is so easy to get.  I tried CakePHP first and while I’m not the dullest tool in the box I just couldn’t get it.  Perhaps now it would make a lot more sense.

As for Phil and him being arrogant and rude…I do agree with you on that. He’s not that way all of the time, but I guess I’d say he’s very opinionated about certain things. 

Hopefully CI goes onward and upward.

Greetings,
This news from Phil creates some confusion for me (as I described in a response to his blog post).

I’m not necessarily “worried” about the future of CodeIgniter.  It has a very solid place in the universe of PHP frameworks.  But it does seem that there is some turbulence with it at the moment.  I don’t want to overplay it, but I do want to understand what it means.

I’ve experimented with several other frameworks: Yii, Symfony, Cake, and Kohana.  I chose to stay with CodeIgniter because I appreciate how direct and clean it is, and I just “get it.”  My sincere hope is that CodeIgniter 3.0 is released and puts to rest all the doubts circling around us right now.

There is some irony in all the attacks we see in blogs recently.  First of all, many of these attacks are specifically related to Laravel.  Next, I think the reason that CodeIgniter is so often the target of these attacks is because it holds a special place among PHP frameworks.

Brian, I respect the work you have done in the CodeIgniter community, and your opinion—like Phil’s—also matters to me!  What do you think is the right attitude and approach during this period?

Thanks,
Matthew

There is some irony in all the attacks we see in blogs recently.  First of all, many of these attacks are specifically related to Laravel.  Next, I think the reason that CodeIgniter is so often the target of these attacks is because it holds a special place among PHP frameworks.

I think what is ironic is that many of the new frameworks have claims to be the best (sometimes comparing themselves to CodeIgniter), but they require so much more effort to use than CodeIgniter. If they are so good, why do they feel the need to mention or compare themselves to CodeIgniter? If it takes longer to achieve the same result, why is that better? If doing a “hello world” is a multi-step process and a pain in my rear, then how is that better? If I can’t write a simple SQL query as easily as I do with CodeIgniter’s active record, then how is that better? If I can’t mix standard HTTP pages with HTTPS pages that have secure cookies, then why is that better? Honestly, I’d guess many people want to use a PHP 5.3+ framework because they think they will harness some magical powers.

I’ve built some big applications, and I’ve never needed PHP namespaces. I’ve never needed traits. I don’t need to write my arrays in a new way, the old way works just fine. In general, basic PHP5 OOP is all most people will ever need. The only PHP 5.3+ features I use is the anonymous functions. Guess what; CodeIgniter 2.1.2 runs on PHP 5.4.4 just fine.

Brian, I respect the work you have done in the CodeIgniter community, and your opinion—like Phil’s—also matters to me!  What do you think is the right attitude and approach during this period?

Honestly, if CI development stopped today and a new version was never released, I think we still have a free product that gets the job done, works great, and makes for fast development. We’ve got an excellent user guide, a mostly active community, and a Google search for some CI issue usually returns exactly what you are looking for.

I don’t know about you, but I’m doing this for a living. I can’t make money if I can’t make things happen, and CI makes things happen. I’d be excited to find a framework that was actually better than CI, meaning that I can develop faster and the job is easier, but it hasn’t happened yet. I need to work less for the same money, not harder for the same money. I think we have a framework worth standing by.

There is some irony in all the attacks we see in blogs recently.  First of all, many of these attacks are specifically related to Laravel.  Next, I think the reason that CodeIgniter is so often the target of these attacks is because it holds a special place among PHP frameworks.

I think what is ironic is that many of the new frameworks have claims to be the best (sometimes comparing themselves to CodeIgniter), but they require so much more effort to use than CodeIgniter. If they are so good, why do they feel the need to mention or compare themselves to CodeIgniter? If it takes longer to achieve the same result, why is that better? If doing a “hello world” is a multi-step process and a pain in my rear, then how is that better? If I can’t write a simple SQL query as easily as I do with CodeIgniter’s active record, then how is that better? If I can’t mix standard HTTP pages with HTTPS pages that have secure cookies, then why is that better? Honestly, I’d guess many people want to use a PHP 5.3+ framework because they think they will harness some magical powers.

I’ve built some big applications, and I’ve never needed PHP namespaces. I’ve never needed traits. I don’t need to write my arrays in a new way, the old way works just fine. In general, basic PHP5 OOP is all most people will ever need. The only PHP 5.3+ features I use is the anonymous functions. Guess what; CodeIgniter 2.1.2 runs on PHP 5.4.4 just fine.

Brian, I respect the work you have done in the CodeIgniter community, and your opinion—like Phil’s—also matters to me!  What do you think is the right attitude and approach during this period?

Honestly, if CI development stopped today and a new version was never released, I think we still have a free product that gets the job done, works great, and makes for fast development. We’ve got an excellent user guide, a mostly active community, and a Google search for some CI issue usually returns exactly what you are looking for.

I don’t know about you, but I’m doing this for a living. I can’t make money if I can’t make things happen, and CI makes things happen. I’d be excited to find a framework that was actually better than CI, meaning that I can develop faster and the job is easier, but it hasn’t happened yet. I need to work less for the same money, not harder for the same money. I think we have a framework worth standing by.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

If it takes longer to achieve the same result, why is that better? If doing a “hello world” is a multi-step process and a pain in my rear, then how is that better? If I can’t write a simple SQL query as easily as I do with CodeIgniter’s active record, then how is that better? If I can’t mix standard HTTP pages with HTTPS pages that have secure cookies, then why is that better?

Assuming offcourse this is the case. Which for some is probably true, and for others it isn’t.

I’ve built some big applications, and I’ve never needed PHP namespaces. I’ve never needed traits. I don’t need to write my arrays in a new way, the old way works just fine.

Not really an argument. I’ve written very large applications in assember. I didn’t need a 3GL.

As always, there is no such thing as “the best”. There is only “the best tool for you, for the job at hand”. It is always a combination of the tool itself, and the person holding it.