Chapter 1. Getting Started with Phalcon

What is Phalcon? Let's start by quoting from the documentation of the official website (http://phalconphp.com/):

Version 2.0 of Phalcon was released in April, and it was developed with a new language called Zephir (http://zephir-lang.com/). Zephir was designed especially for developing PHP extensions, and it is quite user friendly for both (PHP and C) developers.

There are many frameworks out there. The main reasons why we choose Phalcon were for its steep learning curve, speed, and because it is decoupled. (We can use any of its components independently.) If you have some knowledge of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) and some experience with any Object-Relational Mapping (ORM), you will find working with it pretty straightforward.

We will start our journey with this first chapter where we will:

Before starting, we assume that you are using a *nix environment. Personally, I feel comfortable with Debian distributions, especially Ubuntu, which I am using on a daily basis; so, the installations steps that we will talk about are for Ubuntu. The OS is a matter of personal choice, but I highly recommend any *nix distribution for development. (Even Microsoft decided to open source their ASP.NET for Linux early this year)

For other types of OS, you will have to search their official documentation, in terms of "how to". This book is intended to be about Phalcon and tutorials on installing different software on different kinds of OS are out of the scope of this book.

Senior developers might not agree with me on certain subjects or certain techniques and/or recommendations. In general, as a developer, I think you should analyze what is suitable for you and develop a platform according to your (or client) requirements. In addition, most importantly, there is no such thing as "The Perfect Solution". There is always room for improvement.