while i get the joke , i'm sorry , but serious PHP development means bloated frameworks. You cant avoid it.<p>Frameworks code looks ugly because PHP looks ugly . But has anybody seen Rails source code ?Django's ? or even Sinatra's ? it is bloated too, but because Ruby and Python a well designed , when using them , you dont feel they are bloated.<p>That's why you end up ( in PHP ) writing yaml config files for DI, ORM , etc more than actual PHP.<p>If php looked more like Ruby or Python , using symfony 2 or ZF 2 would be less painfull.<p>Now let's consider something else. in Python you have WSGI , Ruby Rake ,etc ... which are really good stuff , universal in the way you plug into them to write your own framework.<p>Up until now, PHP devs felt they did not really need it. But as the PSR effort improves , we need frameworks to implement the same http kernels so we can plug any middleware no matter what the lib is , that's very important. You cant use raw PHP anymore. You need middleware you can use ACCROSS frameworks.<p>So should php devs use frameworks ? yes. just like Ruby , Python devs dont do raw CGI programming. Should i use guzzle instead of CURL ? yes because it has a beautifull and fluent API , and CURL is just plain ugly. Should i use Silex/Slim/Laravel instead of raw PHP ? yes because your application will scale with these simple frameworks. Writing raw PHP without PSR-0 autoloading , and no framework doesnt scale , period.<p>PHP has a real problem. I admit. It needs a real deep , breaking redesign, a clear separation between the core and libraries , and fat trimming. But framework designers did a great job trying to correct its flaws and making PHP development bearable.