The Zend Framework

The Zend Framework was released a few days ago. This is a PHP5-only web application framework from Zend, “the PHP company.” It has been in development for a long time, but if that had a chilling effect on the development of other PHP frameworks, it’s hard to see.

I’m going to go straight for my grim conclusion here: I think many of the other PHP web frameworks in development have no long-term prayer against Zend. It’s not about technical merits, it’s about the business case that Zend is a safer bet than five random guys with a Trac install and a cool logo.

This is kind of too bad, but I don’t think PHP is the platform for the next wave of web innovation anyway. It has set its sights on being Serious Enterprise Business and gnawing at Java’s ankles, and I think it will probably meet with a lot of success.

Who knows, in three years PHP may be the big bad enterprise technology that everybody loves to hate, and Io on Ice or somesuch will be the hot ticket. I can’t wait.