Instead of Solar, I’ve chosen Symfony, but I guess it doesn’t really matter, as long as you don’t go and start Yet Another New Framework.

As was said on http://www.gravitonic.com/blog/archives/000359.html, the NIH syndrom is very dangerous. And not just dangerous, also quite time-consuming. And the latter is my main reason for picking an existing framework and going with that instead of creating my own.

Honestly, I don’t know if I ever want to use RoR again. Yes, I’ve used it on a project and I’ve done all the funky examples. But I bet 2/3 of the people using it can not give you any information from what’s underneath the core due to its generator and all the neat stuff that is supposed to ease the workload. I seriously doubt the quality of code (which is of cause not a problem for RoR alone, but in many other frameworks as well).

And in regard to PHP frameworks.

I see this as a variety! I’ve been using Zend Framework (ZF) for the past five or six months and it’s been a joyride. Sure I am discovering new features every day, but the development is faster already!
I’ve also done a project with Symfony - also liked it a lot. And I’ve tried CakePHP and that’s it.

I think I found my framework(s). It’s either ZF - driven by the people responsible for PHP’s core - or Symfony which is - because it’s been around the block some time - atm way more ready for production than ZF. Symfony also seems to have the larger community and more contributions.

Either way, I have no problem that people like to use something else - SolarPHP or any of the others.
Choice is always good and competition is healthy! Of course using another framework on each project will do you no good in the long run, but then again with a good IDE it’s not so hard to dive into another one.