[jonas123]

Meteor - It's a fullstack framework that let's you write JavaScript both on the front- and backend. It let's you choose what you want to use for your frontend (e. g. React, Vue, Blaze, Angular...). Best feature: It's realtimeness.

And right now I'm trying Laravel (PHP). It has a great documentation. I like the ORM and that it's easy to use. I want to build an API with it and consume it with a SPA and react.

[collyw]

Is using Javascript on the back end really a positive thing? There isn't really a choice on the front end.

[ue_]

This is the main criticism of Javascript on the backend. People didn't have choice on the frontend (and largely still don't unless you transpile), and for some reason people thought it was a good idea to bring this "language of necessity" to the backend.

There are plenty of better solutions like PHP, Ruby or Perl.

[jamesmp98]

Up until recently, I'd choose Node over PHP

[joeclark77]

I think the reason for bringing JS to the backend is that you have to learn it anyway for the front-end, so why not save developers from having to learn two languages. One language = easier learning curve. At least in theory, it sounds reasonable.

[anaganisk]

you might want to try lumen(larvel minus view part) created by the same author since you say you want to build API's

[fimdomeio]

I'm curent developing a rest api in Laravel. I tried lumen before switching but configuring just some basic packages to work with lumen (Dingo, JTW) was such an headache that I moved to laravel.