Answer¶

One of the most interesting and rewarding parts of my job is traveling around and training developers in Symfony2 and Behat. I’ve worked with developers from all sort of background - including people new to PHP and people that have used symfony1 for years.

Usually a training lasts for 2-3 days where we build a real project in Symfony2. I walk around, ask leading - or misleading :) - questions, then let the trainees use their own smartness to code, research, and make mistakes.

It’s always an awesome experience for everyone, except, for the first half of the first day. The biggest challenge that new developers face is in the first 4 hours of being introduced to Symfony2. It’s also - paradoxically - the part where we do the easiest things.

The reason is the sheer number of small things that you learn in those first 4 hours. None of them are hard, but it can be overwhelming:

• Namespaces?
• Composer?
• What is the standard distribution?
• Bundles?
• Remove Acme what? in AppKernel what?
• Why am I editing these random config files? routing_dev.yml? routing.yml?
• What’s a route? Why does it live here?
• Why am I creating a DefaultController class?
• The app directory? src directory? Bundle directory? Lots of directories!?
• What is this ::base.html.twig file?
• Wait, so MyBundle:Default:index is different than MyBundle:Default:index.html.twig?

And for the first 4 hours, you learn these all at once. It’s also the time where you see the most “Symfony’isms”: things that are perfectly specific to the Symfony framework. For example, while “routing” is a generic concept common to all frameworks, the MyBundle:Default:index controller sytnax is totally form Symfony.

The good news is that by the end of the first day, this is all ancient history. By diving in and getting hands-on with the code, we spend the rest of the training peeling the layers off of Symfony, discovering what’s really going on, how you can take complete control, and more advanced features.

During the first 4 hours, you might be thinking: “I don’t know what’s going on, I’m just blindly following these directions”. And while I wish this could be easier - learning something new isn’t always simple. But with patience and perseverance, we always get through it and come running out the other side.

By the end of a few days, you’re bored with Symfony, because you’ve peeled back all its layers.

And that’s really exciting.