I have been programming PHP since 1997. Frameworks of various flavors came about in the early oughts. Some were decent. Others weren’t worth the hard drive space they occupied. They all tended to reflect the state of the PHP mindset of the time they were written.
Laravel bills itself as “The PHP Framework For Web Artisans” and I cannot argue. It contains so many beautiful and elegant features, that books have been written. I’m not going to rewrite any of them. I am going to say that every time I look at Laravel code, I get excited about development again. It’s just that good.
Sure, it’s a little complicated and requires a deep understanding of various PHP features and object-oriented programming in general. The reward you get for knowing this is a framework that provides so much goodness so easily, but can also be pared down. Odds are that if you’ve been doing any PHP web development, you’ve at least heard of Laravel. And if you’re not a PHP web developer, it’s a great reason to become one.