brant interactive

I had a small project written in PHP that made the need for a framework seem initially unnecessary. I know, I know - small projects inevitably get bigger, however, and in turn more complex. And not doing a ton of PHP development makes relatively simple things require a little more thinking than usual. So all of a sudden, I’m bogged down with not only silly little syntax issues, but also design/structural issues.

I decided to try out fusebox for php and can’t believe how much efficiency it brings, even to a simple project. This isn’t news after all, I know this is the case with what fusebox bring to CF development. I suppose the more accurate statement would be: “can’t believe how much efficiency it brings, even to a simple project.. in another language.” I didn’t begin the project with fusebox thinking there would be a slight learning curve associated with fusebox in another language, and while a good learning opportunity, wouldn’t be worth the cost in time. Well, I was wrong, and it’s paying off both in terms of speed and maintenance. After about an hour of rewriting/restructuring, not a single error.

All those annoying questions: where do I put this file, invoke that object, etc., fly out the window. Fusebox takes away all that thinking. An OO/MVC approach in PHP vs. ColdFusion using fusebox then becomes a matter of syntax really. That might be an oversimplification, but the structure of fusebox and the language agnostic nature of the XML controllers, make it so much easier to focus on the task at hand and getting the job done. It really highlights, for me at least, how important a standard approach is to development. Without really thinking about it, fusebox(or your framework of choice) streamlines your thinking process and facilitates a focus on getting there from here, rather than on how to figure out where the heck *here* even is!