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Is a Clean Architecture framework a contradiction?

"Clean Architecture framework" reads like an oxymoron. Clean Architecture is about independence from frameworks: the framework is a detail you keep at arm's length so your business code never depends on it. A framework, in the usual sense, is the opposite. It imposes its conventions, it lives in vendor/, and you depend on it by version. Someone raised this objection to me, and it is fair. So which one is Phexium?

The myth of the micro-framework

"Micro-framework" gets sold as simplicity. Pick a router, handle requests, stay out of your way. The reality is different: micro doesn't mean simple, it means incomplete by design. The decisions the framework skips become your decisions - and in a project that grows, those decisions accumulate.

Config files are just PHP arrays

Open a Symfony project and the routes are in YAML. The services are in YAML. The bundles are in PHP, but only as an array of class names. Open a Laravel project and routing lives in PHP, but services hide behind ServiceProviders that wrap bindings inside register() and boot() methods. Both approaches put a layer between you and the configuration, and that layer is where every typo, missing key, and "where is this interface bound" question accumulates.