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Comment by thmz | Hacker News Reader

You can, but it will not update the view directly as MVC does. You always need to refresh the page for that. In Java or Flex (or with Ajax) the view is updated by the model. That is MVC. In PHP this is just not possible. So imho it is a hype word people don't understand. Most (PHP) frameworks that use 'MVC' are just more bloated than Apache + PHP (a single handler with .htaccess could be nice!).

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MVC ≠ What your pet framework does

MVC is a descriptive point of view, not a prescriptive implementation plan. It's one of the only software idioms that's actually an Alexanderian Pattern, unlike the vast majority of the GoF that's just reflective of language warts/features.

There are tons of completely different ways you could describe the web as MVC:

  Model         View        Controller
  URL           Response    Request
  DB            Response    Request
  Response      Hypermedia  Sub-Requests
  LocalStorage  DOM         Javascript
  data://       JavaScript  DOM Events
  ...

I think that the confusion comes from the fact that the original MVC was a prescriptive design pattern, but use of the term has expanded way, way beyond its original intent.

For instance, events between M and V are pretty much required if you're doing it the "old way," but people tend to ignore that and just explicitly route messages through the C. The expression carries a lot less meaning now than it used to.

I agree. But that's not the case with this PHP framework (as far as I can tell). They use 'MVC' as structure for there code (or as you call it: prescriptive). And then suddenly a lightweight framework is not that lightweight anymore. So again I agree with your descriptions of the web as MVC, but MVC in a PHP framework only... I still believe that's just a hype word.

BTW I don't want to start a flame war about MVC. I just got some question marks about using a PHP 'MVC' framework.

Am I right in saying you think it's bloated because it's superfluous? If that is the case, may I draw your attention to one of the most important reasons for doing request handling within PHP: testability.

Were it not for that I would be in complete agreement with you; I have absolutely no time for any framework that does not allow you to construct a mock request object, throw it into the controller, and verify correctness of the response object produced.

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