This has been an interesting FAQ so far, I'm sure you are a better and more experienced web developer than I but I just can't get my head around a few things. First off I've been coding with PHP for about 2 years now, my code may be a little sloppy but it works fine for me, I actually would really like to learn RubyonRails sometime, I've heard some good things about it. But in the time that I have been developing Php i've never heard of Symfony or CakePHP, they just seem too confusing, also I hate the idea of relying on code that I don't understand fully, I constantly find them limiting and hard to fix or modify to your precise liking. The same with #3 and #5 - why use code that will most likely fill up more lines of text, confuse the heck out of you, and won't always work the way you intended to when you can do it yourself. I just recently was using jQuery for a tab system on my site, they system in the most updated form possible caused safari to crash and didn't work on IE, I had to contstanly fix the code it seemed like. After a month of pain with it I decided to do the exact same thing with my own code and now have virtually the same thing up working perfectly and it took me 2 days.
So perhaps you are right about using 3rd party software but I absolutely can't stand it, maybe I just have had bad luck with it but I plan on doing things myself. I guess I don't see any reasons 'why' to use the frameworks, if you could list a few for me I'd love to hear them :)
Also I noticed you didn't directly mention AJAX (although that may link to some of the frameworks you mentioned) I would consider that to be a 'hot' language for the web developer no?
Thanks, I'd love a response if you have the time.
-Michael Neumann (lonlonranch)
YoinK
wow you sure seem to know your stuff. what's with your level icon? You should have someone make you a better one.