[dumbphone]

I agree with your stance on Symfony, but it's important to realize that not every PHP framework is like that. Symfony adds a lot of complexity that doesn't necessarily mean lower development time or later flexibility - whereas many other PHP frameworks take a much simpler approach.

TL;DR: The problem is with Symfony, not PHP as a whole.

[barendt]

Is there another PHP framework you would recommend? I'm about to start looking at Symfony as a replacement for our aging, home-grown PHP framework. I'm partial to Django, but since PHP is a requirement I could use thoughts on PHP alternatives.

[jtreminio]

Kohana Framework. It's completely OOP, 5.2+, and non-magical.

[SolarUpNote]

The comments in this thread seem to be referring to Symfony 1. Symfony2 is completely different.

If PHP is a requirement, you should really check it out.

[r00fus]

Yii has borrowed a lot from Rails, and slightly improved AR with RelationalActiveRecord.

Of course, it's still PHP, with all of the said inconsistencies.

[dumbphone]

For smaller projects CodeIgniter is great. It's simple to learn and use, and has excellent documentation (better than Kohana's).

[noodle]

i prefer CodeIgniter, myself, when doing PHP development. i like it because it doesn't force you into anything, but if you want to use its helpful features, you can.

[DanHulton]

Also examine Kohana - originally an offshoot of CodeIgniter, the 3.1 branch is an entirely different animal.

Kohana is more of a "toolkit" kind of framework, where most of the components only rely on a few base classes, but are otherwise surprisingly decoupled.