Back in 2013 the company I was working for released a touchscreen kiosk. They rolled their own hardware and wanted a custom software solution. There was limited space on the device and it would not be internet-enabled. There would be no physical access to the device beyond the touchscreen, and the target audience was not known for being technically savvy.

I was tasked with delivering PHP code that would serve pages to the customer. For whatever reason I wasn't allowed to use CodeIgniter, which was what we used elsewhere in the company. I wound up creating a mini-framework to serve pages. It was extremely basic and limited, but in this situation it was what was needed.

It is the only time I've ever had to create a framework. I doubt I'll ever have to do so again. The beauty of frameworks is that they free you up to focus on your application and the logic to support it, rather than figuring out the best way to handle things like routing or database access.