-----
title: "Too many cooks... take #3"
content-type: article
timestamp: 1256408819
tags: "cakephp|rant|php|li3"
-----
<p>Like <a href="/articles/too-many-cooks-take-2/">its predecessor</a>, this is another rant about
    the (end of the) <a href="http://www.cakephp.org">CakePHP framework</a>. Not that I particularly enjoy writing about
    the misfortune of others, but after reading <a
        href="http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/the-cake-is-still-rising">this official announcement</a> I felt
    compelled to post.</p>
<p>It has been two years since my last post on this subject and yes, the cake is still rising, but at what price? Will
    it still taste sweet now that two of its main ingredients are not part of it anymore? As <a
        href="http://cakebaker.42dh.com/2009/10/23/the-end-of-cakephp/">Daniel</a> puts it, <em>probably the best thing
        to do now is to drink tea and to wait until the dust settles&#8230;</em></p>
<p>As far as I&#8217;m concerned, what really matters is that Garrett Woodworth (former CakePHP Project Manager) and
    Nate Abele (former CakePHP Lead Developer) are <em>gone</em>. They realized they had enough Nuts over the years and
    they decided to switch to a more <a href="http://irc.cakephp.org/logs/link/1110092#message1110102">Lithium-rich</a>
    diet. More helthy and depression-proof, too!</p>
<p>Stupid metaphors and painful jokes aside, this is probably the best piece of news the CakePHP community received in a
    long time: the birth of <em>a fork of the CakePHP framework</em>, more precisely of the so-called Cake3 branch.</p>
<p><em>Cake3</em>? I didn&#8217;t keep up-to-date with the buzz, so I didn&#8217;t know anything about this until today,
    when I decided to finally start catching up.</p>
<blockquote>
    <p>&#8220;Cake 3.0, on the other hand, is pretty different from the existing core code in a few notable ways.
        Mainly, it&#8217;s been re-written from the ground up for <span class="caps">PHP</span> 5.3.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="padding-right:6em;">from <a
        href="http://debuggable.com/posts/Cake_3_interview_with_Nate_Abele:4a665a5e-5bfc-4e42-96ee-6d284834cda3">Cake 3
        interview with Nate Abele</a>, debuggable.com</p>
<p>Of course, in these three years of my full immersion in the Ruby language, I almost completely forgot about <span
        class="caps">PHP</span> too. <span class="caps">PHP</span> 5.3 means namespace and closures, i.e. the
    Rubyist&#8217;s daily bread. A more modular CakePHP, properly object-oriented, with an ActiveRecord-like <span
        class="caps">API</span> for models (finally!) is definitely worth a look, especially if it&#8217;s Nut-free as
    well.</p>
<p>The new framework will be called <strong>Lithium</strong> (sounds more professional already), and it&#8217;s due to
    launch next monday, here: <a href="http://li3.rad-dev.org/">http://li3.rad-dev.org/</a> (at the time of writing,
    this link is password-protected).</p>
<p>Personally, I am <em>very</em> excited about this new project. It should have happened three years ago, really, but
    there&#8217;s no point in being greedy: the time has finally come. I would like to (pre-)thank Garrett and Nate for
    their (upcoming) amazing work, I&#8217;ll definitely keep a closer eye on it.</p>