I cannot see what is wrong with your using plain PHP if you can get the job done faster (as long as you avoid things that make exploits easy, such as raw mysql db functions). When the time for a framework comes, you'll know.
Stop worrying about what others think and good luck!
(I had a background in PHP, JS, C++) 1. Off hours on 2-3 days with dive into python 3. 2. A month later - 'oh let's do this in python!' on google code jam 3. 'python challenge? that's cool' - one night hackathon a month later 4. 'I hate php, I'll do this new web app in django' 5. Two days messing with django 6. Five days and the app was done.
I don't know if I write 'best practice' python or django but it's about x6 less code than in PHP. I can rewrite my app completely in 2 days.
For me, the biggest problem in learning a new technology is finding the balance between cowboy hacking & analysis paralysis.
Just curious... Surely you mean django vs php (not zend or some other framework - which _would_ have been the fair comparison.
- Kohana: ~200 lines of code. - Django: 15. Seriously.