I've been using PHP for about 19 years and what I can tell is that both the language and its community have evolved the right way. Writing modern PHP is a joy, IDE support is great and we have tools for everything.
Modern PHP is about community standards, not about any particular framework and exposing Laravel as the best way to get started with PHP is questionable. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to learn (real) PHP.
The article praises PHP but it is sad that doesn't link to any other resource or project which ditches the value of PHP community.
Laravel is great for RAD which is attractive for small projects. The kind of stuff "business with 500K orders runs on a $6 VPS" thing. For clients wanting a robust software system you can use a better tool.
The only bad part of the PHP community is the people that have never done anything else other than WordPress. The shittiest more careless horrible and bad practices riddled codebases I’ve seen in my life come from WordPress developers. It has nothing to do with the language though, it’s just that part of the ecosystem which I think is what drives all the negativity and looking down towards PHP.
Laravel only seems to be for small stuff like
- the backends of Apples Webapps
- spiegel.de, the biggest German news site
- the New York Times website
- backend services at Disney
- About You (large online retailer)
Seriously, though, I myself work for an enterprise that runs big parts of the European energy grid and we use Laravel for all sorts of stuff. At a previous job Laravel powered a whole ISP.
Notice when people say Laravel is good for small stuff and early prototypes, they never explain why.
Modern PHP is about community standards, not about any particular framework and exposing Laravel as the best way to get started with PHP is questionable. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to learn (real) PHP.
The article praises PHP but it is sad that doesn't link to any other resource or project which ditches the value of PHP community.
Laravel is great for RAD which is attractive for small projects. The kind of stuff "business with 500K orders runs on a $6 VPS" thing. For clients wanting a robust software system you can use a better tool.