I have an idea for an app I would like to try out. So naturally I am going to put together a prototype. I started looking into Symphony or Rails as a way to get a prototype out, but I kind of find the whole code generation/ORM thing a bit hard to adapt to. It seems it will take me a week (spare time) at least to get the hang of it before I can even start on my prototype, where I feel like I could get something running with no framework (or even with something less RAD like zend framework or codeIgniter).
Am I being a baby here? How does everyone else prototype?
2 Comments
It depends how complex the prototype is. If it’s proof of concept I just go without any framework. If it’s a little bigger I go with Code Igniter or Zend.
I would never prototype anything in symfony; it’s very heavy and has big start-up costs, to say nothing of the learning curve if you’ve never used it before.
People sing the praises of prototyping in Rails but I’ve never got around to learning it properly, so there would be another big startup cost there.
You’re not being a baby. You’re being rational.
You should write your prototype using whichever framework you’re most comfortable with, which may be no framework at all. Make sure that the relevant bits are separated out as much as possible, so that it won’t be too terrible to move to something more powerful later.
A prototype needs to get done and thrown away as fast as possible. If a framework doesn’t serve that end, then don’t use it.