Perhaps you feel I am saying that you must exhaustively read the framework's source code to understand it. I am not. You should have the ability to quickly open up your framework of choice's source code, navigate to the portion that contains the relevant bit of info you need and go from there.
"going from there" sometimes entails referencing a few base classes or figuring out what the result of some custom methods or functions do. It shouldn't require understanding every line of code of the framework.
> now I'm expected to read the PHP code PLUS the code for the framework?
Only if the framework's documentation or the internet fail to answer your question faster, yes.
OK. Sure.
Less sarcastically, tooling is often very helpful when you have to dive into the source of a library.
My boss wants the bug fixed in a couple hours. I can't spend a couple weeks reading the framework source so I can fix the bug. (For the zend form example, I wound up writing my own form instead of reusing what was already there.)
If I have a problem with a website written in PHP, I read the PHP source and can fix the problem. If I have a problem with a website written in PHP plus a framework, now I'm expected to read the PHP code PLUS the code for the framework? That's several orders of magnitude more work.