Zend vs Symfony learning time

Question

Is faster to learn Zend Framework or Symfony? Which framework has more and clear documentation?

Answer 1

I think both frameworks take some time to learn properly but you can't beat Symfony's documentation.

Answer 2

I'm learning Symfony, and I think that the l-curve for it it's very hard for the first days (at least a week of full-immersion), especially if you haven't ever heard about ORM, decoration, layouts, templates and so on. I'have spent 1 hour a week since november,2010 and now I'm stuck... Zend is probably a bit easier, but I'm not so sure, depends on your technical background. Some collegues of me say ZF is valid like Symfony and it's easier to learn. The online documentation is incomplete (words of a ZF specialist), and you should buy a third-party book to focus learning. Symfony has instead a good choice of free online books (I'm using "Practical Symfony").

HTH

Answer 3

I would say zend is harder to learn... not because it is complex but because it is way simple in design. As many will point out, its loosely coupled. It can be integreated to anything... any other framework. To make such a developement friendly framework, the simplicity level is overreached. And to do one small thing, like modifying some form design, you end up getting tangled in too many things and start banging your head in between decorator pattern, factory pattern, but still learn nothing related to the framework itself. But give time, it will start making sense eventually and when it does, you will be happy that you took the decision to go with zend framework

Answer 4

I think the documentation for both is clear enough. But somehow it seems to be, that ZF is simplier to learn because it constist of many loosely coupled classes. Symfony is more consistent to me and it's fundamental terms like "bundle" are a little bit more difficult to learn than those of ZF.