Even after a couple projects I still didn't "get it." Most of my time was spent in the docs and stack overflow trying to learn the "symfony way" of doing things rather than just getting it done.
- Too much nesting, both in file layout and yaml configurations - Too many different ways to do things (YAML, PHP, .ini, file annotations) - Too verbose when coding (namespaces, long class and method names) - And don't get me started with Twig
I took those hard knocks and tried to write my own mini-framework, which only taught me why you don't write frameworks. It is really hard to do well.
Then I found laravel [1] and have been impressed. It is more opinionated than Symfony and feels more cormfortable to develop on. Less configuration, less verbosity. I combed through the docs and had a project up and running in two days.
But here is the real nugget, kids. Using a framework on a long-term project is like marriage. It takes commitment. You will be in it for a while, so you had better make sure you can live with it. You have to invest your time and effort into it to understand it as much as possible -- warts and all.