Years of picking through the pieces of other developers loosely documented homespun apps made me appreciate the value in a framework - even a dead or dying one. As a rule of thumb, if I'm developing a pet personal project, then I'll write it myself, if its work then I'll consider a framework, depending on the scope of a given project. In the real world of commercial web applications your project will very likely be touched by many other developers over time. Many of these developers may have a relatively fleeting engagement - i.e addressing one bug or adding one feature.I prefer not to force these developers to read the entirety of my code to do their job.