[wwweston]

What is it about Laravel specifically that you like?

Also, since we're on the topic, I notice that the article also boosts it specifically as an advantage in scaling php ("Fathom's case shows that you can [scale] very effectively with an arsenal of tooling that comes from Laravel.").

This is a surprise to me. Why would the scaling capability come from a framework (generally a collection of code that's essentially executed from within the runtime)? I would expect performance scaling to come from runtime extensions or parameter tweaking or alternate runtimes.