One of the things that the Agile movement got right was the whole "minimum viable product" concept: the idea that it's desirable to get a minimum viable product shipped as soon as is reasonably possible. They prioritise that above things like producing comprehensive documentation.

Within the next day or two, you'll see this philosophy in action when I push out some kind of basic but working version of the new code generator. Whatever comes out will be far from perfect. However, you can rest assured, it won't work unless your app is in 'dev' mode. In that respect, it'll be secure; but please treat it as alpha software. It is untested and, as a matter of fact, it'll probably be full of mistakes. My anticipation is that it'll take several iterations before it's perfect. Soon, we'll have a versioning system that makes it easy to roll out updates.

I want you to know a couple of things about me, personally.

Not only have I not made a penny from this framework, I haven't even figured out how to monetise it!

The truth is, I didn't want to make this framework or any framework. For a solid three or four years I waited and waited for somebody to build a PHP framework that said "no thanks" to all the bloat. Nobody built it. Eventually, I felt compelled just to do the thing myself. But let it be known, I do not consider any of this to be ideal. Frankly, I'd be much happier just being a regular developer than having the obligations that I have to contend with on a daily basis.

Be in no doubt, there will be errors from time to time, but on every metric that counts, this framework WINS.

You go look at the benchmarks page and see for yourself how Trongate is in a different league from everything else that's out there. Of course, we could talk about things like stability, no third-party dependencies, simple syntax, a smaller footprint, better security, better alignment with the core language of PHP, and in all those instances, and more, Trongate WINS.

Now, about the community and where we go from here.

We are absolutely screaming out for talent. We need other developers to come on board. We want to help them. We want to shine a beautiful light on them. We want to positively encourage them. We want to say, "this framework welcomes you".

Take Balazs, for example. I couldn't tell you when he first started using Trongate or anything like that. However, he came onto my radar about six months ago and in a heartbeat I gave him the keys to the Trongate channel on YouTube. More recently, we've had another new superstar come along and as I type I'm thinking about Jim, with his excellent YouTube video. I hope there will be a lot more people like that who come on board. Not only do I want people like that to come on board, I want to put them in leadership positions. I want them to be public facing and driving this framework into the future.

And let me tell you, I want another 400 people just like Balazs. Of course, that'll never happen (he's unique!) but the point is, we need talented developers to come and join us. If you're a developer and you're checking out this framework and wondering whether or not to get involved, I'm telling you we want you. I'm stressing that as strongly as the English language will allow.

But there is a little fly in the ointment, isn't there?

As our beautiful framework continues to grow there will be times when people appear and their energy is all wrong.

It's important for us to welcome constructive criticism. If you spot a bug and tell me how to fix it, or point out a flaw in a helpful way, I will genuinely thank you, and I'm sure we'll all be grateful. If you submit a pull request on GitHub, you'll get instant hero status.

However, I have zero energy left for lengthy, destructive rants that ignore everything this framework does well. If your only contribution is to angrily tear things down without offering solutions, please know that I won't be engaging with that energy. You will not get to exchange a solitary sentence with me. You can find somebody to humour you. It won't be me.

I'm not banning anyone, but I'm also not playing the "please give us another chance" game.

It's all about energy.

DC