[eluser]Crath[/eluser]
1) My
biggest concern with starting to use CI is, loosing my current practices. Currently, obviously, I create everything from scratch. If I use CI, am I going to get so accustomed to its way of interfacing a database, or managing data (I haven't dug into it deep yet, so im not sure of the capabilities) that I will feel a bit uncomfortable doing it outside of CI, for example if I am working on a clients website that doesn't use it.
2) I am really looking forward to the MVC style coding. It looks really like a really interesting jump for me, and could help me keep my sites much more organized and clean. The one part I am worried about is, how bad is the learning curve? I have been creating apps for quite a while, and the MVC does make a lot of sense, but am I going to be lost for awhile? Breaking my code apart (models and views and controllers) seems like a scary thing at first. And, related to #1, will it affect my ability to write a full standalone class on a clients website, when I am not in a CI environment?
3) How difficult is it to upgrade CI? I used Joomla for one of my projects, and ended up writing a lot of custom code into the core, which made it impossible to upgrade it without killing the entire site. I know that Joomla is a CMS, while CI is a framework, so I will not be editing any core files (i assume), so everything should go smoothly?
4) Was CI a good decision? I know this is the official CI forum, so chances are you will say yes, but I'm sure many people here also have experience in other frameworks. I just feel, that for the applications that I will use it for, knowing CI will be extremely beneficial. Should I look into another framework before I dive in? This is my first framework, so its a whole new world.
5) How well does CI and jQuery or Prototype mix? I know one is client side and one is server side, but I sometimes here of CI and jQuery working well together (maybe its just their personal preference). I haven't decided which client side framework I wanted to use yet either, but I am leaning towards jQuery.
It took me up until this point to finally go with frameworks. I was always against using them, preferring to write my own classes and such myself, but that's just so repetitive and can get kinda messy. So hopefully getting these questions answered will get me on my way, thanks!
