Laura Thomson asks do all frameworks suck? She clarifies the exaggerated title:
In summary:
Let’s be clear here: I am not recommending people write spaghetti code, or that they embed HTML willy- nilly in their PHP. My recommendation in making any kind of architectural decision is to know what tradeoffs you are making and make an educated decision. It’s important to remember that you can follow some of the basic rules of MVC and get a good number of the benefits without the bloat. It’s equally important to remember that there is more than one way to architect a web app.
I do not think frameworks suck, I think wrong decisions do. It is very tempting to do a black-box selection of frameworks, without realizing the implications. They can be constraining, especially frameworks because they impose the architecture and design. You create a dependency when you buy into the framework. This dependency causes many restrictions if you ignore requirements and do not understand the capabilities and restrictions of the framework. A white-box analysis of whether the framework applies or not can help you make an informed decision.
