I spent so many years perfecting PHP, Mysql, and other languages from scratch. After 10 years of doing this it seemed that now all full time jobs require you to know wordpress, codeigniter, cakePHP, etc. At this time I kinda gave up since those programs are based on PHP using custom functions that you have to memorize. Plus by the time I learned them I was afraid they will not be used anymore. I may take the time to learn those crap frameworks so I can get a job. Do you feel that they are here to stay?
10 years exp and you don't know a framework? hehe... yes frameworks will always be a must in a respectable company~
Frameworks are definitely here to stay - Wordpress for example is definitely the most-used blog-software around, not to mention all the branches of different sites using it. Same for Joomla, Drupal and most of the other big ones. However, if you're very experienced, and have been doing this for 10 years, knowing them or not when applying shouldn't be a big deal - you shold be able to pick up a framework pretty quick. You don't need to know everything at heart - Google is a mouseclick away. However - the comment above about frameworks always being a must in a respectable company is abit boffish - yes, frameworks will probably be used, but they shouldn't be very important - being able to adapt, create anything from nothing and smart, quick to catch on, able to see the need for the application in question, and able to talk to people should be above it on any list.
Unfortunately yes, so long as there are lazy, sleazy, halfwit developers 'frameworks' aren't going anywhere, no matter how badly they piss all over any project they are used on. PARTICULARLY true of the steaming piles of manure known as HTML, CSS and Javascript 'frameworks'... PHP-wise it's not AS bad, though I do come away choking back the bile after dealing with most of them. Sad part is, the 'suits with paychecks' usually don't know any better, and they're all sick buzzwords they "know they should have" even when they don't know what they actually are. That said, you SHOULD take the time to learn them -- if for no other reason than to know WHY they are garbage, and you can go in "like a boss" to clean up other people's messes. USUALLY if a job 'requires' you know it, the reason is they are already using it... no matter how stupid a choice it might have been for them. You can't go in and fix train wrecks of ineptitude without knowing how they got there in the first place; admittedly my entire web development career was built around cleaning up other people's messes; using 1k of code without frameworks for ever 2k other people use with frameworks, NOT counting the framework against that total.
9 out of 10 jobs (at least in the UK) require you to know a framework. and when I say framework I mean an MVC framework like codeigniter, laravel, zend framework, kohana and so on.
MVC frameworks for PHP is... usually, and I'm quite scared now, since I'm agreeing with @deathshadow, complete and utter garbage.
Uhm? Don't understand? That's presumptuous. I just don't see the benefit of adding a bunch of extra functions, classes and several kb of extra code on top of something which is already more or less made for templating and reuse of code. Problem with most frameworks is that they tend to redo a lot of already working functions, creates an extra abstraction-layer, and often work just fine for limited assignments, but often demands rather extensive custom-code (which sort of defeats the purpose) to get things done.
I agree in 90% of the cases but try Laravel or Symfony you will be amazed on how natural it will be to code into it.
I admit I haven't tried either of those, but I've glanced at Symfony, and I'm not convinced. I'll have a look at Laravel just to see what you're on about
Sorry, but NO. I've been programming for just about 37 years now, having started out hand assembled RCA1802 code and entered it on toggle switches; I know bullshit bloated halfwit garbage when I see it; PHP frameworks being the modern day equivalent to Clipper scripts. They're cute for small projects where the bloat has little impact and the developer crys "Wah, Wah, Wah, I don't want to learn the underlying language"... which of course the average user of such systems failure to grasp the underlying language makes them completely unqualified to say if their pet 'framework of choice' is garbage or not. But let's look at the ones mentioned: Laravel raises warning flags in that it's not just a framework, it's reliant both directions on other non-PHP systems; the idiotic "Composer Dependency Manager" -- which if you need something like that you probably have no business working in PHP. (Admittedly, I say the same thing about PEAR)... and the even DUMBER halfwit bull of their own templating sytem "Blade" -- which much like Smarty leaves me thinking "Wait, isn't PHP itself a templating system?" Pointless redundancies with wrappers basically designed to make sure it NEVER works like actual PHP just adds endless pointless overhead for nothing. Poster children for such overhead being endless pointless daisy chaining of method results; the extra bloat of unneccessary function or method calls is just begging for a poor performing result... see the fat bloated idiotic train wreck that jQuery is which functions in much the same manner. The code made with it is vague, needlessly and pointlessly abstracted to the point the programmer has no control, no chance in HELL of backtracing anything when there's a failure, and on the whole reeks of the same type of "I can haz progamming" garbage as languages that died ages ago like Prolog. Much less it seems to have to rely on it's own parser and is effectively an entirely new language unto itself -- if that parser is written in PHP then the result is going to be so painfully slow and painfully fail to leverage code caching models you might as well run PHP without a bytecode accelerator! Of course I get warning flags the moment people start throwing around the word "artisan" as that usually either means artsy fartsy types who have no business doing back end coding, or putting the word out there to make oneself sound 'fancy' while still not being qualified to actually write PHP. As to Symfony, their website ALONE throws up warning signs that they don't know enough about web techonologies to be telling us how to do Jack! Do you see the "trifecta of /fail/ at web design? illegible undersized fixed metric (px) fonts, illegible color contrasts, fixed width layout? ... if they can't even do a front-end right, how am I to trust them for back end code? Of course, starting out at a 4.9 megabyte tarball before you even start coding isn't exactly encouraging either; particularly when it unpacks into a 40 megabyte train-wreck of 6,000 plus files! ... and that's before talking about them using PHP 4 style require/include (since ('') isn't supposed to be optional anymore, great warnings there in 5.5), the idiotic re-re "Let's open and close PHP on every blasted line" garbage approach to mixing markup with code, and the "let's spend so much time creating abstract classes we end up with hundreds of includes doing the job of a half dozen" ... and don't even get me STARTED about the overhead of it using YAML which has no native parser in PHP. (it's a PECL extension, which I'm also not a fan of). Though at least it uses PDO, that's more than most frameworks manage; sad thing is it's about the only positive thing I can say about it. Both Symfony and Laravel reek of "let's run thousands of lines of code to avoid typing in five lines" nonsense. Any time "saved" (which I doubt exists) using these will typically come back to bite the end user sooner than later, in throwing hardware at it, dealing with hosts that don't want you dicking around on the back end, and making fixing anything harder thanks to the endless and pointless abstractions. Developers are the dumber for these even existing. I simply do not see the appeal, or even the point of such absolute garbage. It reminds me WAY too much of some of the trash code mainframe developers used to use in Cobol and DiBol; and hearkens back to the age when people used to quote projects in K-LoC's.
If you took the time to actually LEARN PHP and how to use databases, and are already using PDO or mysqli... understanding how to use prepared queries and how to extend objects yourself... You'll find that the more you deal with frameworks - especially the halfwit garbage most people using them vomit up and call code - the more you'll sour on them. The same goes for javascript frameworks if you actually understand javascript, and HTML/CSS frameworks if you took the time to LEARN HTML and CSS. It's why they strike me as either sleazy shortcuts used by the inept to sweep their ineptitude under the rug, nube predation to make sure people starting out never actually learn to do anything properly, or sick buzzwords used by suits with checkbooks who don't know any better!
They're in demand because they "simplify" things, and are buzzwords in and off themselves. That doesn't mean they do anything good.
Company owners/CEOs/hiring managers know nothing about programming/web dev. They keep hearing the words "wordpress", "frameworks", "boilerplate", etc etc. and think these are all must haves in potential employees, and think this is the future that will help their company. This may be something you will want to force yourself to learn just so you understand why they are not always the best solutions and that you can then later explain this to an employer/client
Here is an article that is a good read about why the creator of PHP thinks all frameworks suck: http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/226-4-Reasons-Why-All-PHP-Frameworks-Suck.html