PEAR - PHP Extension and Application Repository

Well, I's five years since I first started looking into PHP, and one week ago I started my first project that uses
packages from the PEAR repository. Why so late? I don't know.

It's many years since I first learned about PEAR, and for about a year ago I went to a Bergen Linux
(and BSD) User Group meeting where Stig Bakken talked about Pear, where it was
then, and where it was going.
He said many promising things about Pear, and my interest grew, but not enough for me to start using it.
But when I started planning my newest project; a customer control panel for a
company I started thinking of using Pear. I don't know why, probably because I'm
sick of writing forms, input validation and that stuff. And guess what, Pear has
a package for that. So i decided to use that, and also one of the template packages.
And I must say: I enjoy working with Pear, it eases my work alot.