Magento2 Development

Magento2, the long awaited sequel is finally available but no one is sure whether they should use it yet.

There are definite improvements with a lot of the original code rewritten and the introduction of various more modern tools and design patterns but there are a few things to consider when deciding on Magento1 or Magento2.

Magento1 Vs Magento2

Magento1

It's not a straight forward decision whether you choose Magento1 or Magento2. The original Magento is a very stable platform as it's been around since 2008. There is a huge selection of tried and tested extensions and excellent coding resources available. It's not that difficult to find highly experienced Magento1 developers/agencies who know the platform inside out.

But..

Magento1 code is very old and will soon be out of date. It's only a matter of time until your Magento1 site will have to be moved to Magento2.

Magento2

Magento2 has various code improvements including:

  • Composer to manage dependencies
  • Namespacing
  • Dependency Injection
  • Proxy Objects

This will bring the codebase more inline with modern PHP frameworks. Magento2 will eventually take over so if you were getting a new Magento site built now the argument is that it will save a rebuild to Magento2 within a couple of years.

Concerns with moving to Magento2

Is it really ready? It's not clear how stable Magento2 really is as there is constant ongoing development with some large changes. It's not clear how different Magento2 will be in a years time which may cause high development costs if there are a lot changes.

There is a lack of extensions available at this current time which will lead to very expensive site builds with a lot of customisations.

There isn't enough documentation and coding help available for Magento2 at the moment. As Magento2 hasn't yet been adopted by most agencies there is a lack of information and a lack of developers with Magento2 expertise.