Kohana (php 5) differences with codeigniter..

[eluser]n0xie[/eluser]
To add a few pros:

- CodeIgniter is backed by a commercial company. This means they have a commercial interest to keep their code secure, well tested and constant (i.e. backwards compatibility). Their own product Expression Engine (which is really a nice CMS, I got to play with it during the christmas holiday) runs on it.
- Kohana in particular seems to have the idea that breaking backward compatibility because the new and improved version is much better is a Good Thing™. I dread the day I would update my live servers and suddenly half my functionality is not only gone, but has either disappeared, has been renamed, or has been changed to something entirely different.
- Because EE runs on CI, there is a commercial motive keeping the project going: if all the developers who actively develop Kohana left to go do the next big thing (this has happened before with OS projects with RoR for instance) you are on your own supporting Kohana.
- This is also the reason why CI still supports PHP4. Sure some improvements could be made if it was entirely PHP5, but since CI is really fast (and I do mean REALLY fast) as is, it really wouldn't be THAT much of a difference (I know some people will disagree but this is how I see it).

My experience with the other frameworks is as followed:
- Cake: syntax looks a lot like CI but is about 100 times slower which is just plain stupid. Lots of code available though and a lot of developers swear by it.
- Symfony: very mature framework but a bit overkill for the sort of projects we usually do. Also a very steep learning curve which pays off once you learn to use the Symfony shell-like generate options.
- Zend: So modular that it gets annoying. It's far too 'complex' (as in too many options available which make it complicated, not as in difficult) for any sane person to quickly build something. Yes it is modular so very handy for big projects, but again the types of projects we do, CI is good enough.
- Kohana: CI but very disorganised and very bad documentation. They got a few things right, they got a few things very very wrong. It's up to individual taste I guess to prefer one or the other.