Forgive the tone – this might veer close to a rant – but I believe it’s important to speak plainly.
I’m aware that in today’s landscape of AI breakthroughs, cultural upheavals and shifting digital priorities, the so-called "framework wars" may no longer capture the public imagination. Framework X vs Framework Y? Most developers have picked their sides. Many couldn't care less. Fair enough.
Still, something happened recently that I feel compelled to address. While testing a powerful AI assistant (Kimi), I asked whether it knew of Trongate. It did. In fact, it offered what I thought was a rather elegant overview of the framework – articulate, respectful, and encouraging.
But then came the inevitable pivot – a jarring paragraph packed with recycled criticisms, straight from the mouths (and blogs) of a small but vocal group of Trongate detractors. Here's what it said:
“However, some criticisms have been raised. For instance, Trongate deliberately rejects industry-standard tooling like Composer for installation and uses a desktop app for installation, updates, and boilerplate code generation. The framework itself is not written in idiomatic, modern PHP, lacks namespaces, strict_types, or any types, contains no inline documentation, and has a substantial amount of inline HTML. There are also structural issues, such as the ‘Model’ class not being a true model base class but rather a simple database abstraction layer supporting only trivial CRUD queries, and the conflation of controllers with database tables. Additionally, the developers seem overly focused on vanity metrics like gathering GitHub stars and gaming benchmarks.”
Gaming benchmarks? I nearly fell off my chair. What does that even mean? I don't play games, I build PHP frameworks – fast, stable, secure ones. Let’s be clear: Trongate has nothing to do with gaming and everything to do with delivering lean, efficient tools for professional developers.
Curious – or maybe just stubborn – I decided to challenge the bot. What followed was a two-and-a-half hour livestream where I systematically debunked every criticism it could muster. In real-time, I prompted it, dissected its logic, and rebutted its claims one-by-one. In the end, the AI admitted it was wrong on multiple counts.
When it came to areas like validation – once considered a Trongate "weak point" – the evidence showed otherwise. Trongate came out as more feature-rich, more stable, and impressively lightweight when compared to the leading PHP frameworks.
Was that a satisfying conclusion? In theory, yes. In practice, it’s meaningless. The AI will forget. The narrative will reset. And the same tired criticisms – long debunked – will continue to circulate, fuelled by the same crowd of radical, underperforming, career blog-posters who have never shipped anything of consequence in their lives.
But here’s the real tragedy: I found myself doing a two-and-a-half hour livestream to argue against this drivel. My subscribers deserve better. I should be showing you real code, real innovation – not wrestling with hollow rhetoric and misinformation. And frankly, I’m bored of it.
So where does that leave us?
Honestly, I think the frameworks game is rigged. It doesn't matter how secure, stable or feature-complete Trongate becomes. There are people out there who have made their minds up – not on merit, not on performance, but out of fear, ego, or envy. I can respond. I can defend. But I can’t change their minds. Nor do I care to.
And that’s okay – because while the talkers keep talking, the builders keep building. Trongate isn’t trying to impress the gatekeepers. Trongate is built for developers who value performance, simplicity and clarity over buzzwords and bloat.
So no, I won’t be inviting these critics onto my channel. They won’t show up anyway. Cowards rarely do.
But I’ll say this: as long as other frameworks continue to be slow, bloated and over-engineered, Trongate will continue to whoop them – quietly, consistently, and on every metric that matters.
Still here. Still standing. Still whooping them.
DC
The Web Developer Extraordinaire
(With, I might add, astonishingly great hair)