This book started with some specific examples on how CodeIgniter can save your time and effort when you are designing websites using PHP. We've gone through some of the many things CI can do—using as a basis some parts of a website that will conduct regular tests on other websites. I hope that these examples have shown how CI makes coding much easier at the macro level.
In this chapter, I'd like to step back a little and look at the overall impact of using the CodeIgniter framework. Does it make writing a complete application easier? Can it produce professional results? I'm sure at this point we would say "yes", but let's see where CI is of help to us.
When you write a book like this, it's important to divide it into sections and focus on one new trick at a time. It's sometimes difficult to see how all the bits fit together. I hope the CRUD code in the previous chapter went some way in putting different bits of code together, mixing up Active Record, unit testing...