[symbiotic]

I don't think there's any disagreement about using the right tool for the job. What I took from the original MicroPHP Manifesto is that the solution is not to have a ton of hammers to choose from. Instead, make sure you have a couple different types of hammer heads and a couple different types of handles that you can mix and match so that the right hammer is always available.

This way your toolbox is much lighter and easier to carry around (easier to keep up to date with improvements to the code and easier to maintain). I think it's about breaking things into smaller pieces.

[ErrantX]

I used to feel this way. However I tended to find myself, on most projects, spending a surprising amount of time tweaking incompatibilities between the various lightweight libraries I was using. And it was a bit of an effort to unify things like logging and error reporting.

Which is when I realised the utility of a bulky framework; for the most part it is a suite of libraries that work together/are compatible but which someone else maintains for me :)

This was a big step for me.

(although I still use the lightweight approach for smaller projects)

[symbiotic]

That's a reasonable complaint, but maybe it means we need better lightweight libraries with well thought out interfaces or better library management like deweller suggested in the comments on the original thread.

[ErrantX]

That would be good - but then you begin to talk about a unified logging interface and standardisation like folder structure, class loading, class interfaces and so on.

At which point it's basically a framework (perhaps without the routing/initialisation code).

One thing I would like to see (no idea if it exists) is a core package architecture (that did all of the above) and let you hang packages as and when you need them.

I've been keeping an eye out for such a thing for a while with no joy.