Understanding architecture, and the trade-offs that different architectures imply, is an important part of any software project. [...] To be able to speak and think about the design of your system properly, though, you need to understand the trade-offs that come with it. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and designing a system to be powerful in one way invariably tends to harm it in another. It is important to know what your priorities are before you start building; and in a distributed collaborative environment like Drupal to all agree what those priorities are, at least to a large extent.

Talks about software architecture design patterns (like Model-View-Controller or Naked objects) including one that's not so much a pattern as an evolution - monolithic architecture. Among the list of things he suggests considering are subjects like:

• Modifiability
• Testability
• Performance
• Scalability
• Usability
• Maintainability

He compares this list to how the Drupal project is run and finds a large emphasis on extensibility, modularity, scalability. These came at the cost of testability, verifiability and understandability however.

We are trying to get a better view of the use of symfony, and of what people think are its strongest and weakest points.

If you have five minutes to spare, we'd love to have your feedback on the matter. There is a poll thread in the forum where you can express your opinion.

If you're a user of the symfony framework, be sure to head over to the post and grab the list of questions they'd like to hear about. Tons of developers have already responded, so add your answers today!