The future of CI |
I've often wondered how the new developers imagine the future of CI. Version 4 is a massive step in the right direction and I'm impressed by what I've seen so far.
Has BCIT released an introspective on their design goals for the current and future versions of CI? I'd love to read it if they have.
The sticky threads at the top of the CI4 Development subforum pretty much reflect the design goals of CodeIgniter's "council", i.e. the group trying to steer it forward.
"BCIT", the institute, is hardly aware of the project, to be honest. They host it and support my efforts as project lead, but it doesn't show up much on their radar with some 50,000 students enrolled in hundreds of different programs This is the institute's first open source project, and I don't think they know what to make of it, although I am doing my darndest to raise the profile and awareness, and to incorporate open source (not just CI) more into the tech curriculum We are a small fish in the big pond of BCIT
James Parry
Project Lead
(03-12-2018, 03:51 PM)jlp Wrote: The sticky threads at the top of the CI4 Development subforum pretty much reflect the design goals of CodeIgniter's "council", i.e. the group trying to steer it forward. Is there any way we can help as the community or as businesses that may use CI?
Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!
@albertleao Thank you for the sentiment. Gaining support for open source in academia is a slow struggle - use it? of course, it's free; contribute to it? why, when we could be publishing or chasing research funding
The community can embrace it and encourage its development, which will give it a higher profile, for sure, but that profile isn't necessarily seen or felt by the academic or government leadership. I suspect it might take a local (to BCIT) large employer to tell BCIT that they want to see open source in the curriculum before they "see the light". Devops, open source, IoT - those may be huge in industry, but their adoption in academia is slow and piecemeal, from what I have experienced. AR/VR is making more inroads, probably because of targetted funding from some of the players. At the individual program/course level, some faculty are getting great support from Amazon & Red Hat, but the faculty still have to persuade the larger academic community to embrace the tech. There are several post-secondary institutes that are making inroads with open source curriculum - Rochester Institute of Technology and Seneca College, for instance. BCIT may get there too, I am sure. In the words of one of the great teachers, "Patience you must have, my young Padawan." I remind myself of that often
James Parry
Project Lead
(03-12-2018, 09:14 PM)jlp Wrote: @albertleao Thank you for the sentiment. Gaining support for open source in academia is a slow struggle - use it? of course, it's free; contribute to it? why, when we could be publishing or chasing research funding Thats unfortunate. From the tech community here in Atlanta, GA, most PHP devs see codeigniter as a 'legacy' platform at this point. Not that it matters from a hiring perspective in our business, but I'm definitely seeing a decline in great programmers that are comfortable with CI. I wish there was something we could do to inject some love into the project.
Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!
(03-13-2018, 11:25 AM)albertleao Wrote: Thats unfortunate. From the tech community here in Atlanta, GA, most PHP devs see codeigniter as a 'legacy' platform at this point. Not that it matters from a hiring perspective in our business, but I'm definitely seeing a decline in great programmers that are comfortable with CI. I wish there was something we could do to inject some love into the project. For the time being, CI's reputation is a good thing for some of us. Even recently I have been able to take on work specifically because of employers looking for people that can work with CodeIgniter. Knowing that our numbers are dwindling means that we can charge more for our specialization.
(03-13-2018, 11:48 AM)skunkbad Wrote: For the time being, CI's reputation is a good thing for some of us. Even recently I have been able to take on work specifically because of employers looking for people that can work with CodeIgniter. Knowing that our numbers are dwindling means that we can charge more for our specialization. You're right, which is nice for now, but as numbers continue to dwindle, so will available work. I see this a lot as most inquiries i get for my codeigniter knowledge are to help people migrate off of codeigniter. The following is simply my opinion that I'm sure will stir a pot of bees, but I personally think it was a mistake to have codeigniter 4 rewritten the way it is being rewritten now. Not necessarily from a coding perspective because it is a huge step in the right direction, but in a marketing and traction perspective it doesn't bode well. The transition from CI3 to CI4 is going to be extremely time consuming and difficult for most out there that people will have a realistic decision to make: Should I migrate from CI3 to CI4 or migrate from CI3 to another framework? Business 101 says it's much easier and cost effective to keep an existing client than to get new clients. I feel the same applies when trying to keep loyal developers on a platform. The work Killishan has put into CI4 has been really impressive and I'm not trying to take away from that, but from the amount of people who migrated off CI because of 2 => 3, I can only imagine what it'll be from 3 => 4. We'll see I guess.
Codeigniter is simply one of the tools you need to learn to be a successful developer. Always add more tools to your coding arsenal!
I think that CI4 will be one of the "modern" choices for developers looking to migrate from CI3 when they are ready to (for whatever reason).
Symfony 4 looks like direct competition, with a similar philosophy/strategy to CI4. They differ in that their components each have their own repo and would be individually composer-installed, whereas composer is an option with CI4, not a requirement. Laravel will continue to be direct competition, with its own pluses and minuses. I think the transition from CI3 to any of these will be "time consuming and difficult", but Killishan has put a huge effort into making it as painless as possible, and writing up some transition techniques in his blog and upcoming book. CI4 has my vote, but then I might be a bit biased (03-13-2018, 11:56 AM)albertleao Wrote: You're right, which is nice for now, but as numbers continue to dwindle, so will available work. I see this a lot as most inquiries i get for my codeigniter knowledge are to help people migrate off of codeigniter. I actually never migrated to CI3 until BCIT took control because of the licensing issue. That was a glorious day. I think it's hard to compare the migration of 2 => 3 and expected migration of 3 => 4 because of that. If the license would have remained the way Ellislab had intended, I know for sure I would no longer be using CI. We don't have that problem anymore. I'd like to see CI4 do well, but only time will tell.
In my opinion CI is doing just fine and when CI4 hits I feel very confident that it will surprise a lot of people.
A couple of good points... - Despite people writing it off it is STILL in the conversation of top PHP frameworks (even in 2018). - On GITHUB it is the number three most stared PHP framework (and still getting stars) Let's keep in mind that every framework has it's challenges. CI has its' challenges and it STILL manages to stay relevant. Thanks to the current CI team. We appreciate ALL that you do. I look forward to the bright CI future. |
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