The future of Codeigniter

1.  Do you think it's acceptable to take five years to rewrite a framework?

Yes, yes I do. I've been involved with CI in one form or the other from the time it belonged to ElisLab until now. And even when I used to hangout at the IRC #codeigniter channel the question "When will _insertversionhere_ will be ready?" The answer always was, its ready when it's ready. Specially when ElisLab left the project.

2.  Do you think the insertion of thousands of lines of copyright notices on CI3 represents good intention or petty bureaucracy?

Can't really answer this, but if the project is now maintained by the Codeigniter foundation and not University of British Columbia the copyright should reflect that. At least in CI 4

3.  Do you think that Codeigniter is in a stronger position - relative to other frameworks - than it was when it was owned by EllisLab?

At the time CI was created to support EllisLab product. Their CMS. Even if there was a pull request on github that could bring awesome stuff to the framework, but somehow could bring problems to their product they would simply reject that proposal. I don't thing that can happen now. Because now it's a true community project. That makes it better than what it was at the time IMO.

4.  Now that five years have passed and we have some history to look back upon, how would you rate the management of Codeigniter, on a scale of one to ten, since ownership was passed from Ellislab to the University of British Columbia?

As for CI I can't really say much, but if it was not for the University of British Columbia there would be not codeigniter now. They kept the community going and they have my thanks for it. I'd give then 10/10.

5.  Given the fact that industry leading frameworks like Angular are component driven (i.e., modular), do you think it was a wise decision for the guardians of Codeigniter to throw out the family jewels and turn their backs on modular web development?

I really don't get this question, since CI4 you can have modular stuff in it.

6.  Given the fact that the web development community appears to be on the verge of moving AWAY from centralised, privately owned code sharing websites - such as Packagist and NPM - do you think it was a good idea to tether CI4 to PSR?

7.  Codeigniter HAD the fastest benchmarks of all of the leading PHP frameworks.  It's factually provable.  Thanks to PSR-4 autoloading (as seen in CI4) those benchmarks and CI's unique position in the marketplace has now been thrown down the toilet - sacrificed in exchange for some kind of approval from a self appointed governing body who go by the name of PHPFIG.  Do you think this was an exchange that strengthened Codeigniter's position within the marketplace?

Don't really have an answer for this one.

8.  Unless I'm very much mistaken there are no Codeigniter conferences, no podcasts, no official YouTube channel and not even a working 'contact us' form!  This is in stark contrast to the Laravel community, who enjoy a calendar that's packed with all sorts of live events and exciting launches.  So, please help me to understand this... by what definition do any of you think that Codeigniter has a thriving community?

Do something about it mate. I'm doing what I can after my 9-5 job. I write blog posts about CI, I help out people on the slack channel. I'm planing on start doing some screencasts on youtube on how to use the new Framework. If there's something you can do, just do it (just_do_it.gif) :p.

11.  Finally, why should anyone use Codeigniter?  One thing's for sure - you've certainly no longer got the right to talk about market leading benchmarks.  So, go ahead.  I'd love to hear the elevator pitch.  Why should any developer choose Codeigniter? 

At our company I decide what framework is used and where. For instance, before CI4 all our internal projects were done in Ci3, I mean our internal projects like intranet, small apps used by our company. For our clients we used stuff like laravel. I decided that for a reason. Ci3 had, and still have a thing that I love. Stability and stuff to the base structure barely change. That is really good for projects that you want to manage and keep active for 5 years or more. You don't want a framework that changes completely from version to version like laravel for projects like that. Your either are stuck with a version or have to spend a lot of time aka money upgrading from one version to the next. When we're talking about internal projects that is not ideal. You want to spend as less time you can in them. It's not like a client project where you can just charge them for the upgrade. 

Overall, I think CI4 has a bright future ahead and I truly believe in the project.

Website: marcomonteiro.net  | Blog: blog.marcomonteiro.net | Twitter: @marcogmonteiro | TILThings: tilthings.com