Pros and Cons of building with a Framework

Why should we build with a framework?  Many companies are looking for those with experience building applications in an MVC Framework.  Some of the popular frameworks these days are:

Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symphony, and CodeIgniter.

Pros:

The framework is easier to maintain in the long run.  You can also develop different parts of the application independently.

Cons:

Typically takes longer to build initially.  Different frameworks are not generally compatible with one another.  Although they all follow the same MVC pattern, the configuration details and architecture for each framework is different.

Codeigniter - Part 1

CodeIgniter is a lightweight open-source framework that I  have heard about, but am now taking a closer look at it as a way to rapidly prototype and build languages.  Will be reporting back soon in part 2.