Today, the CakePHP world has been rocked. These few short snippets from various blogs around the web should illuminate what has been going on.
CakePHP Project Manager Garrett Woodworth and Developer Nate Abele have left the CakePHP development team.
It seems like they started to work on a fork of Cake3 called “Lithium”.
On the bright side we still have Cake and now Garrett and Nate are off to do whatever they have planned next.
So, in short two of the major team members of CakePHP left to start their own framework, possibly.
My Thoughts
I’ve used CakePHP before, a few times, here and there. Let me tell you: not a single project I’ve ever worked on could have survived with the current CakePHP. It may have been a problem with me, I admit that. However, CakePHP promises too much and delivers too little. That aside, I’ve always loved how controllers and models work. But because every modern website relies on more than just index, add, delete and view, I feel like it lost touch.
I seriously hope that whatever Garrett Woodworth and Nate Abele are working on lives up to CakePHP and also exceeds it. CakePHP was started a good number of years ago. In development time, internet time, that’s like a couple of decades, maybe more. CakePHP has been held back by PHP 4 for too long. When did PHP 5 come out? Years ago. High turn around is important. The docs feel inconsistant because examples are often coded for PHP 4.
I’d like to see Lithium solve those issues. I would happily beta test such a project. I’m hopeful that CakePHP 1.3 or CakePHP 2 can turn itself around and I’m excited for this new (possible) framework. If you’re deadly bored, you can take a peak at what Cake3 looked like back in July when I saved a copy.
Your Thoughts
I’d like to hear some of your thoughts on CakePHP’s loss of core team members and also the possibly fork of our beloved framework.
Hi Ryan,
I’m interested in how you feel Cake was limited. In what ways did you find it delivered too little?
Also, I’m not sure I understand how things were limited to “just index, add, delete and view”. What were you trying to achieve here that Cake couldn’t accommodate?
I feel like I’ve been locked into those four methods. I don’t have much to back that up though, actually. I tried to use the built in Auth component but I ended trying to make my own. It’s dirty but I knew what was going on.
If you ever take a look at the forge or bakery, you’ll see how old some things are, how dead things are. That’s a big turn off, if you ask me. The docs seem a bit disorganized and wordy; they show you what you can do, the basic syntax and stuff, but it certainly doesn’t cover more realistic applications.
Ryan, I wish gwoo or nate come here to teach you how to implement more then baked crud actions. Join irc and ask, we’ll not help you to grow here.
As of your php4/5 complains, I have nothing more to say then – CakePHP roadmap. PHP5 only version, full 5.3 support, namespaces, you’ll find everything there. Truth is that new project can move on forward much faster, because it is not held back by community. If CakePHP codebase follows fresh edge trends closely without backwards compatibility, you’ll have more reasons to cry for. Large community around CakePHP will not let this project die; therefore core developers owns to community some ’sanity’ when going forward with core.
As of ‘loss’, I’ll repeat something I said in CakePHP IRC channel yesterday: if anyone worries that CakePHP world have lost some brains and hands, then I assure you we have lost them a months ago, when they started this project (now named Lithium) and kept this development in secret for nearby half of core development team. Just checkout its timeline – you’ll find out exact date when we lost them. This double resignation just proves it, nothing more – and IMO should happen before last CakeFest, when existency of this code was discovered.
In fact, it is everyone’s choice. I wish good success to Lithium; I found very sexy things in it. But I do prefer stable codebase with large community – over new project. Fact that it is driven by excellent ex-CakePHP core developers doesn’t make much difference to me.
I’ve been in #cakephp and it has been useful and I’d love to learn more about everything to do with Cake.
As for php 4/5, I think there is a serious need for Cake 1.3 to be ready and flowing. Lithium could be really great, I saw it when it was still Cake3 but what scared me was php 5.3 and those absurd namespaces. Nevertheless, closures should make things easier for everyone. Following trends isn’t what I’m talking about. Even PHP stopped supporting old versions of PHP 4. I understand, too well, that you can’t always change the server you work on but I would hate to work on a project that has no option but to work on PHP 4. I couldn’t imagine it. Cake will never die, I agree.
But again, I agree, good luck to Lithium; I love a stable code base that keeps up with the times and a community that doesn’t let its resources get old.