[DigitalSea]

Laravel alone was enough to bring me back to PHP. It seriously has made PHP exciting again (I come from a Codeigniter and Zend background). It takes all of the things people love about Ruby on Rails and brings them to a PHP framework utilising modern features like traits alongside the fantastic selection of packages like Cashier. The even more surprising aspect of Laravel isn't how great it is, but rather the fact it was built by one guy... Other frameworks like Zend, Symfony, Codeigniter were built by teams. Of course, Laravel has contributors nowadays being an open source project, but in the early days it was mostly Taylor taking the reigns.

[debaserab2]

If you like it because it's like rails, why not just use rails? The rails ecosystem is undoubtedly stronger than laravel's, and it's a more mature framework. I don't see where laravel fits in the spectrum of PHP frameworks.

[DigitalSea]

What makes you think I don't use Rails? I use whatever I think fits the purpose at hand. I sometimes use Rails for a project, sometimes I might use Node.js and other times I'll use PHP. It all depends on different factors like budgets, time, the task and team (if any).

Frameworks and languages are a lot like databases. They all achieve the same thing, they're just all slightly different and good for different purposes. I sometimes use MySQL, other times I'll use PostgreSQL, sometimes I might use a graph database like Neo4j or other times I might even use something like MongoDB.

The Rails community has been around a lot longer than Laravel's community, so you can't even compare them. The only community worthy of being compared to Rails is Codeigniter's and at the peak of Codeigniter's popularity, I would argue Codeigniter had the bigger community. Laravel is a mere couple of years old, the community is already pretty strong. Lets reevaluate soon when the right amount of time has passed and then see where the community is at. You only have to look at the amount of Github stars to see how popular it is.

[debaserab2]

So Laravel is a lot like Rails, but it doesn't compare to Rails because it's not matured yet. Ok..

MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs MongoDB vs Neo4j are all data stores with very different principles and goals. To say they all "achieve the same thing" is like saying an airplane is the same as a speedboat because they both get you from point A to point B.

I certainly believe that frameworks and libraries are tools for different problems and there isn't a one size fits all approach, I just have trouble discerning what problem Laravel is solving better than other frameworks or what makes it advantageous to use.

[sheetjs]

Using Rails requires Ruby, and arguably the PHP ecosystem is stronger than the Ruby ecosystem.

[teh_klev]

>"If you like it because it's like rails, why not just use rails?"

PHP is ubiquitous on shared hosting platforms, there aren't that many "shared" Rails hosters out there. Morts still use shared hosters.

[chatmasta]

This was a much more compelling argument when shared hosting was still cheaper than a VPS with root access. But now you can get a VPS from any slew of providers, like digitalocean, for $5 a month. Root access computing has never been more accessible, and shared hosting is rapidly losing any value proposition it once had. So targeting PHP purely because it's more ubiquitous on shared hosting than Rails, is making less and less sense.

[surreal]

That's still $60 a year, which is at least double the price of a simple reliable shared hosting package. The shared hosting has other conveniences too. I'm not saying it's without downsides, but there are cases for choosing it, and therefore for choosing PHP.

[jules]

You must value your time and sanity really low if you are willing to put up with PHP instead of Ruby for $30/year.

[weego]

Upload and run with all the security and management done for you is a great way to get going in web development. I don't feel that the idea that everyone doing reasonably simple PHP stuff should have root access 'makes sense' actually does.

[Kiro]

I don't want root access. I want to sign up, upload my files through FTP and have it working instantly without having to worry about anything else.

[chatmasta]

... which you can also do on platforms like digitalocean. Just spin up a preconfigured dokku droplet and git push.

[Kiro]

> Just spin up a preconfigured dokku droplet and git push.

Exactly the kind of things I don't want to be bothered with. I'm just saying that traditional web hosts suit my needs perfectly and DigitalOcean is no replacement.

[ben0x539]

Compared to the php workflow, this is pure technobabble.

[jules]

This was already an outdated argument 5 years ago.

[colordrops]

If you already have a lot of existing PHP code it wouldn't make sense to move to Ruby just to adopt a framework.

[Gigablah]

> The even more surprising aspect of Laravel isn't how great it is, but rather the fact it was built by one guy

... using mostly 3rd party components, the majority from Symfony. So no, it's not "built by one guy".

[DigitalSea]

Irrespective of the fact that Laravel is made up from some Symfony components, before Laravel came along no other framework (not even Symfony) managed to turn the tide. Zend was seen as this mammoth framework not targeted at the mainstream, Codeigniter was at a cross-roads losing prominent developers in the community and lacking in features (PHP 4 support as well). The issue with Symfony is that it is inaccessible, I've seen it used in the enterprise much like I've seen Zend used in the same space, Laravel is more of a peoples framework targeted at everyone from entrepreneurs to large companies and it is more accessible.

It would be in the best interests of Laravel for Symfony to succeed, but you have to realise they're targeting two different subsets of users. I think what makes Laravel more appealing to me as a developer is it takes the good from the likes of Symfony, takes the great documentation and accessibility aspect from Codeigniter all while remaining a relatively soft opinionated framework, it provides you with a structure but the IoC container means you can structure it however you want. The Blade templating system is fantastic, the ORM is feature-rich and very powerful and the addition of database migrations right out of the box.

There isn't a lot of different between Laravel and Symfony considering they share similar components and the unique selling points of Laravel are components that can be used within a Symfony 2 application. I think Laravel gives you a little more out-of-the-box, whereas Symfony makes you add what you need and I can see the benefits from both sides of the fence. If you want to compare frameworks, a real comparison would be Laravel and Silex.

One aspect I like about Symfony is the ability to define routes 4 different ways; YAML, PHP, XML and Annotations in a controller. Compared to Laravel's routes.php file. If you're a developer that wants to customise absolutely every single aspect Symfony is probably a better choice, if you're happy with the guiding hand Laravel gives you out-of-the-box and don't care what format your configuration files and routes are written in (amongst other aspects), Laravel is the better choice. The learning curve of Symfony is far higher than Laravel due to the amount of configuration it allows you to do and the fact it is completely unopinionated.

So, while Taylor didn't build every aspect of the framework (a very well-known fact), there are certain aspects he did build specifically for Laravel. He also took the time to piece all of the components together from Symfony and other authors to create what is arguably one of the most developer friendly PHP frameworks since Codeigniter hit the scene in 2007. Before Laravel came along, I can't recall anyone else attempting to make a consumer friendly framework, can you?

[adamors]

PHP was always stupid easy to use (and abuse), the fact that Laravel is another easy framework doesn't turn any tides. The actual tide was turned by Symfony2 which was the first well architected, well designed PHP framework when it came out in 2011. Since then a mature, knowledgeable community created a lot of great components.

Laravel on the other hand is exactly where Codeiginiter was: easy to pick up, and easy to write crap code in. The whole Facade nonsense is already being abused to no end, not to mention the ORM, Eloquent. Similarly to CI, if you want to do something remotely advanced with it, you end up reading the code constantly, because the "great" 10 page documentation is only for absolute beginners.

[giaour]

Every time I found something I liked about Laravel, it turned out to be a Symfony component. Every time I found something I hated, there was a Symfony component that did it better.

The best example has to be the templating languages used. Blade is a weird port of ASP.NET MVC's Razor syntax and I've never understood why anyone would use it over Twig (or even just raw PHP).

[krapp]

Whenever I do use Laravel the first thing I do is swap out blade for twig. I'm pretty sure no one would use blade if Laravel hadn't decided on it.

It's weird that a framework so self-consciously dedicated to 'best practices' would ignore what's considered one of, if not the, best templating systems in PHP. Particularly given the extra benefits twig provides out of the box (automatic escaping, a function sandbox, hooks for writing your own plugins and parsers, etc.)