Back To The Doctors

I'm just heading out the door to meet my fate - I get the results of my MRI back today, and should know whether or not I'm having surgery again on my eye socket. I meant to wake up today and do a humorous post about boxer shorts, but I probably won't have time until later tonight.

I've had my head down deep in work the last few days. Part of that has brought to my attention a PHP framework called Symfony. I've spent about 30 hours playing with it, and I can say that's fairly amazing, even though it's a bit daunting at first. All these people who swear how awesome Ruby is should really check out some of the development you can do using something like Symfony or Zend (although, having used both, I think Symfony is a bit more practical). The obvious benefit of both of these frameworks is the use of the Model-View-Controller pattern (which Ruby also has bragging rights for). Essentially you attempt to completely separate data and logic from actual presentation (think Wordpress themes, but more lightweight). In theory this makes it far easier to develop and maintain.

If you do any PHP development, you should really brush up on both of those frameworks. I've saved myself lots of time by doing small things with either of those. If you're doing a project that can make use of Drupal or Wordpress, or some other CMS, then check those out. But if you're forced to develop something that's rather specific, you might want to check out Symfony.