Web frameworks

[Ender]

Two questions. One, are web frameworks worth it? I'm talking about django, RoR, Java/Spring/JSP, and ASP/.NET. Two, which is the most practical and convenient framework for the individual programmer? If I had to guess it would be Python django or Ruby on Rails. But are they really worth learning... or is it better just doing things purely in PHP?

I like to follow the principle of K.I.S.S., and these popular web frameworks seem to defy it.

[Ender]

Feel free to move into general programming. I posted this in here accidentally.

[Sidoh]

"KISS" is fine when you're working alone on a project that's on the order of a few thousand LOC.

It's not fine when you're working on a team and a project on the order of 100k+ LOC. Things turn into spaghetti mess quickly, and that's why these frameworks exist. They force -- or at least highly encourage -- good programming practices, and they structure things in a pretty nice way.

Rails is pretty awesome, but there are other technologies that are worth learning. I'm pretty excited about some of the javascript MVC frameworks. ember.js looked the most promising.

Rails can be overkill for simple things. But even if you're getting marginally complex, it tends to be easier to deal with than PHP.