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For some time now i have been researching and playing with different MVC frameworks.  Ultimately the choice can only be one:  Ruby on Rails.   There is alot to say about Rails, but i’ll breifly list whats most important to me. 

1. Convention over Configuration:
   The concept of convention over configuration refers to the fact that Rails assumes a number of defaults for the way one should build a typical web application.
2. Don’t repeat yourself: “DRY”
   Rails supports the principles of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) programming. When you decide to change the behavior of an application that’s based on the DRY principle,
3. Agile Development:
   More traditional approaches to software development (such as iterative development and the waterfall model) usually attempt to sketch out a long-running and rather static plan for an application’s goals and needs using predictive methods. These development models usually approach applications from the bottom up—that is, by working on the data first.

In contrast, Agile development methods use an adaptive approach. Small teams, typically consisting of fewer than ten developers, iteratively complete small units of the project. Before starting an iteration, the team reevaluates the priorities for the application that’s being built; these priorities may have shifted during the previous iteration, so they may need adjustment. Agile developers also architect their applications from the top down, starting with the design, which may be as simple as a sketch of the interface on a sheet of paper.

A An insightful post by the King of php himself can be found here: THE NO FRAMEWORK PHP MVC FRAMEWORK. Confusing? hahah – well Andy Jeffries ( A PHP, RUBY ON RAILS AND MYSQL Developer) sums it up really well here:  DESIGN PATTERNS VS AGILE DEVELOPMENT

I posted this in a forum in the morning today, please read the reply i got:

Keep an open mind …….

A good framework:

1. better separates presentation from logic
2. has a clear documented structure
3. has features

He uses a view, controller, and model but he doesn’t use a “front controller”. URL’s are mapped directly to views. That’s not necessarily bad, (that’s the asp.net way) but:

- without a messy .htaccess file, you miss out on nice flexible hackable urls
- you miss out on pre processing like showing a cached page without loading the entire view file and all it’s includes. 

I believe this person who commented on my post in the forums has a POINT WORTH NOTING…