Features That are missing right now

In all of the apps I've written once in CodeIgniter, I've never used middleware or an ORM, though most have had an auth of one sort or another.

Instead:

- middleware was replaced with an AuthController that would ensure the user was logged in and had permissions
- Query builder and well named methods in the model were enough.

That's not to say those features aren't nice when you have them, but since CI hasn't had them - people still get by. And in some ways, it's all a bit more explicit and simple to follow along.

Interesting. I'm ok with it not being included in CI as it doesn't really affect me but I'd be generally curious to get a broader view of what CI users do.

Let's just say for examples sake that 95% of CI users install an ORM right after they setup a CI application, it would be interesting to see how CI could help the community.

Anyways, like I said, it really doesn't change anything for me, but it would settle my curiosity. The few CI applications I still manage (I've mostly migrated to Laravel and Node, but my biggest app is in CI) all use an ORM, Auth, a 3rd party migration tool (I like Phinx), a date library (Carbon), and vlucas/phpdotenv. But it's easy enough for me to add those myself.

Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!