I like Laravel Elixir (the npm package) and Eloquent (the ORM). Laravel itself is overly complex and the learning curve keeps getting higher. I'm much happier with Slim 3
I think with the composer package manager mixing and matching components fais what makes modern PHP so effective. I'm using the mini-framework Silex and a bunch of components I find useful (twig, phpexcel ).
I like Laravel Elixir (the npm package) and Eloquent (the ORM). Laravel itself is overly complex and the learning curve keeps getting higher. I'm much happier with Slim 3