The future of Yii

Hi all,

The reason for this topic is a link from one of the Yii committers, Paul Klimov:
http://skynin.xyz/razrabotchikam/is-yii-dying/

At the end of the post, Paul ends with this:

You may be surprised to hear this from one of the YiiSoft core memeber, but DO NOT recommend to start new project on Yii2 or migrate project from other framework to Yii2. It would be much more reliable for you to use Laravel. It is relatively close to Yii by its architecture and approaches, while it has a commercial background and support, which make its future reliable.

As he writes in this paragraph, I am indeed surprised to read this from one of the Yii core committers. So, the question simply boils down to one simple question: Is Yii slowly dying? It seems to me that it lacks the resources to boost its development rate.

Itā€™d be nice to read your thoughts on this.

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You can see in the activities list at https://github.com/yiisoft that Yii is still well and alive.

Yii 2.1/3.0 have indeed faced some challenges (internal communication, decision making process, lack of resources), that led to Paul Klimov writing that article and stopping his (tremendous) effort.

The development have resumed since then, some new resources/fresh blood joined in, and the current effort is on fixing all packages tests while adapting the code base to the new DI implementation.

You are more than welcome to join the fun :slight_smile:

Yii is a community project, without any funding backing it. Itā€™s up to us all to keep it alive and well. Yes It Is.

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Pardon my French, but Klimov really is an disloyal &^%#$&^%. A team member should never bad mouth the project that he is entrusted with in public! That is pathetic, unforgivable.
He is entitled to his opinion, but he really should keep it to himself.

CakePHP is much closer to Yii than Laravel. There is too many magical mushrooms in Laravel, in my humble opinion :slight_smile:

Iā€™m really not agreeing with your french here. I donā€™t think this forum should be a place for insults.

Practice what you preach.

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If you are a member of the Yii team, is it okay to advise people to not use Yii ? I think not. That is totally disloyal. Thatā€™s what I mean. There are things you simply cannot do.It is like a general who has sworn allegiance, but advises new recruits to enlist with the enemy. That is bad.:wink:
I am not saying that we are not entitled to voice our opinion. Thatā€™s not the same thing. It is about trust, and loyalty.

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Thatā€™s a nicer way to write it, without involving his family.

I personally think that the article was written out of spite and frustration, after a really huge effort on his part and communication issues. Letā€™s try to empathize, and most important of all, move along and be productive.

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Interesting. I should have guessed it. Itā€™s not the first time that a member of a team decides to lash out in public after having a disagreement with the rest of the team.
I still stand behind my ā€œFrenchā€, though. He deserves a thrashing for breaking that rule. It is so disappointing.
I hope that they figure this out, behind closed doors, as one should.

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Thatā€™s interesting:

CakePHP is much closer to Yii than Laravel. There is too many magical mushrooms in Laravel, in my humble opinion

I started reading the documentation for Laravel. I havenā€™t written a single line of code using Laravel, however from my journey so far, I understand that it contains several layers of abstraction, thus making it slow when seeing the benchmarks. And Yii2 remains one of the fastest.

However, what worries me is the rate of development. It is slow. Issues keep piling up and there are no resources to go through them, not even fix them. If you look at the milestones set in Github, the milestones are many months behind from their initial release date (eg. 2.0.16). I think a development backed up by a company would benefit Yii for the future. Maybe if someone looked for a company to act as a patron for the development of Yii?

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My two centsā€¦

I also read Paulā€™s blurb in December and to be honest it did stir me into checking out Laravel. As a Yii hobbyist Iā€™ve often thought about the move so during the Christmas period I started migrating a project of mine. After about 5 days into it I stopped as it became clear that although they have the mindshare out there I certainly wasnt ā€œwowedā€ by it (although their vue.js story is quite good). Admittedly it was based on only 5 days of effort :slight_smile: So for now Iā€™m quite happy to stick with Yii and see how Yii 3 turns out. From the commits the team is certainly putting in the hard yards so it shouldnā€™t be too long till its released.

In regards to Paulā€¦ From Github comms their appears to be some frustration on his part with the direction of 2.0.x and 2.1 (now 3). I guess when you put a great deal of work into something and things are not moving in the direction (and speed) that you want then it can certainly leave you frustrated. Saying that though my understanding is heā€™s put a massive amount of work in Yii over the years so really the community should be extremely grateful for his effort and wish him all the best. Who knows things change, he may return.

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Good comment :slight_smile:

But while I am grateful for Paulā€™s work, I am not pleased with (to put it very lightly!) his behavior. It is a team effort - and if you donā€™t get your way, donā€™t whine about it in public. It is understandable that team members come and go and have their differences.Things like that happens. Misbehaving is not alright, though.

I am still confident about Yii and itā€™s future. I canā€™t really off the top of my head point to anything that is as befittingly good as Yii. :slight_smile:

Weā€™re working on it. First step is setting up a foundation with the purpose or funding distribution that disallows spending on anything but OpenSource or Yii needs. It takes time but moves forward.

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I would say the same about your behavior. As an active moderator on the official forum of Yii framework, you should really think twice before writing anything - some of your comments may do more damage to Yii Community than one rant of a former core member.

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Thatā€™s great to read that. I hope all goes well and soon a solution will be found.

Calm down, guys :slight_smile: Weā€™re here to build stuff we use together so letā€™s focus on it keeping conversation constructive.

There were difficulties and some frustration in the core team but Yii went over it, unfortunately losing Paul who, no doubt, deserves his place in community hall of fame for his contributions. I hope heā€™ll contribute again one day but currently itā€™s not likely.

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I sincerely hope that he will - his contributions are great :slight_smile:

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Yes, youā€™re right. *crawls back into hole* :speak_no_evil:

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I am kind of ā€˜shockedā€™ of Paulā€™s statement. In the past Iā€™ve never felt that Yii is a slowly dying framework or a framework that should not be used for new projects. In fact I am actively trying to promote the framework in our company (with some success).

In my opinion Yii it still the very best framework (that I know) in terms of documentation and flexibility. I also love the explicitness of the Yii that I miss in other frameworks. Iā€™ve once looked into Laravel but quickly decided to stay with Yii (although that was many years ago).

Yii still feels like a ā€˜healthyā€™ framework to me. In fact, Iā€™ve never waited for more than one hour or so for an initial feedback on a new Github issue regarding the framework or the app (thanks to samdark).

Bottom line: I am very thankful for every maintainer of Yii and the community as whole. And I will going to continue to use Yii for private projects for the reasons described above.

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I have built a lot of projects on Yii and also Yii2. So I am very thankful for all the core team and contributors.

Iā€™m currently putting in $5 on Patreon, I know itā€™s small quantity but I am willing to contribute more if that helps the development.

Let me know how the foundation goes and I think you should set some goals and ask more individuals and companies to collaborate either with money or commits. Iā€™m sure there are a lot of people who will want to give a hand one way or another.

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relax, someday yii2 will die anyway (yii1 still lives btw)ā€¦ just be ready for yii3 :smiley:

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Why on Yiiā€™s official site is there no section to attract sponsorship?

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