Robert Peake throws his hat into the ring today with this new post on his blog discussing the recent Zend announcement of the framework/Eclipse partnership.

What Zend's recent announcement actually means has been the buzz of the PHP blogosphere lately. While their partnership with Eclipse is fairly easy to understand. . However, their business partnerships and underlying (stated) attempt to bring a unified application development process to PHP is both tantalizing and bewildering.

The motivation for this move is pretty clear: Zend has always sought to partner up with big-name businesses, and the PHP community should thank them for it: it raises the profile of PHP so it's that much easier the next time you propose using it at work.

He notes that a unified framework could be a good source of marketing for PHP, providing the equivilent of what JSP and ASP have. He also mentions, though, that a general framework can sometimes be a hinderance, forcing you to conform to someone else's ideas. Basically, he's taking the "wait and see" approach right now - Zend could produce the "holy grail" of PHP frameworks, or it could all blow up in their face.

And hoping one day we won't look back on where we are now and nostalgically sigh, "remember when PHP used to be fun?"