CodeIgniter vs Laravel

Hi,

So a bunch of CodeIgniter nerds/contributors decided to build a new framework because things about CodeIgniter didn’t sit too well with them … tell me something new.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting down the Laravel crew for what they did, I just wanted to point out this happens all the time.

So what’s the point of this Friday afternoon blog post?

Well, my right-hand-nerd started to look into Laravel just a few days ago, and he found that it did indeed have some nice advantages over CodeIgniter out of the box:

• Integrated auth library.
• Easy layout/templating.
• Bundles – bundles are like external modules created by third party developers.

We’ve created a few projects at killerSites using CodeIgniter because it was the preference of my left-hand-nerd at the time (another fine nerd programmer) – and he knew CodeIgniter well. In moving to CodeIgniter, I actually broke my rule of not switching frameworks … up until then, we used the Zend Framework. But the key point for me was we had CodeIgniter skills already and so we didn’t have to learn something new on the fly – thus I broke my rule.

It’s a good thing to learn new frameworks

Learning a new PHP framework has one huge advantage: it makes you a better programmer.

Why?

Because you can compare frameworks off each other. You will be able to see how different design strategies work, and judge for yourself what works best.

In the end, you may find the new Framework only does some things better and it may even do other things worse than the old framework (happens a lot) … Whatever the case, it’s probably a bad idea to learn something new when you have deadlines looming.

… And that’s what my right-hand-nerd discovered, when he thought of using Laravel for a new project he was starting on. So after a few hours of digging into Laravel (and really digging it,) he opted to go back to what he knew, CodeIgniter. At least for now.

Check out CodeIgniter

Check out Laravel

Stefan Mischook
killerPHP.com