[shellab]

I understand that there are tradeoffs when you choose to build on a framework. I've written many applications from scratch (without frameworks) then I've written custom frameworks and CMSs for various projects and now I'm looking at existing frameworks as a way to bring in quality code, with features that I would be implementing by hand otherwise.

I've been impressed with CodeIgniter and now I'm working with Kohana because it's still fast, fairly low level and if I want to use the higher level stuff for prototyping I can and then I can refactor down to lower levels easily for performance later on when it's necessary.

There are things that I'd consider to be frameworkish components being built into PHP. For example the filter extension is something where prior to it's inception I had this functionality built into my framework. You could say it's a framework for filtering input.

When you use frameworks that have to use all of the frameworks 'magic' you do get a performance hit. It will almost always be faster to implement your own SQL statements instead of relying on an active record library, especially with complex logic.

You need to balance what you're trying to do with what you're options are. If you're writing a personal app that only you are using and you want it out as soon as possible then some of these frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Symfony would be great. Something to get the code out so you can start using it. If you are really concerned with performance then use something like the Zend Framework where you can reimplement parts for performance and do all your queries by hand.