The Story

SigmaPHP started in 2022 as a simple side project. At the time, I had an old PHP 5.6 application that I wanted to revamp and modernize. I began by building a small router from scratch. There was no grand plan, and I never intended to create a framework. It was just curiosity and the desire to understand things better — but somehow, here we are.

Since I started programming, I have disliked one thing more than anything else: magic. Magic hides the real beauty of programming and slowly turns developers into high-level users who blindly rely on tools and frameworks. APIs change, behaviors shift, functions get deprecated, and suddenly things stop working — without us fully understanding why. I believe developers should be able to question, inspect, and understand what their tools are doing.

Returning to the project, I initially tried using Laravel’s router as a standalone component. While powerful, it felt heavier than what I needed. I wanted something simpler, more explicit, and completely magic-free — ideally without requiring a composer install just to get started.

To be honest, I did not have a clear roadmap. I was still learning, exploring, and figuring things out as I went. I had never contributed to an open-source project before (still working on that!), and I certainly did not consider myself an expert. What I did have, however, was a strong understanding of outcomes. Through experience with Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and PHP, I knew what features should exist and — more importantly — how they should behave.

I continued building, one component at a time — from the router to the template engine, followed by the ORM and many other parts. Today, SigmaPHP represents nearly three years of learning, iteration, and persistence. It is not perfect, and it is still evolving, but I am proud of how far it has come. I will continue improving it, learning from mistakes, and refining the design, with the hope of making SigmaPHP a solid, reliable, and transparent piece of software.