I dunno... Their home page looks like something out of the Panera Bread playbook looking at the homepage. 'Web artisans'? Why is it 'clean' because it has an absurd amount of whitespace and comments of platitudes for the code example?

"Clever" "marketing" language like this is not unique to Laravel, most frameworks use language like it for tag-lines on their homepage. Pyramid, a framework for Python, even goes with the same "artisan" language. They're just trying to be fun, inspiring, etc

From the home page of a few other frameworks:

Django: "The web framework for perfectionists with deadlines."

Flask: "Web development, one drop at a time"

Express: "Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js"

Pyramid: "You need a Python web framework that supports your decisions, by artisans for artisans."

Why is it clean? Build an application with Laravel and you'll find out. :) The documentation and community are excellent. I've used many frameworks across many different languages, and (imo) it really is very nice to work in.

It's funny how the most negativity comes from people with very little experience, or at least recent experience, in the thing that they don't like.

It’s not funny. People who have bought in something have (1) to rationalize their choice and (2) cheer so the project remains alive and a major contender.

That's not my experience at all. Most developers I know have worked with technologies before and come out saying, "I would rather use something else next time."

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks "modern PHP" struggles to fit more than a couple of lines of real code on a screen surrounded, as it is, by space-wasting nonsense such as block comments, blank lines and K&R brace style. No wonder people prefer Ruby. Around the time of PHP5 the language ditched its own identity and sought to become the scripting version of Java. Give me back my procedural PHP4.

Lol, I agree their packaging looks a bit different but the contents of the package are basically the same.

Working with both Laravel and Rails will make it clearer that they try to follow the same principles of convention over configuration and programmer happiness :).

The command line tool for Laravel is named 'artisan'. You use it to do everything in Laravel, from setting up controllers/views to seeding databases.

I guess "Laravel - The PHP Framework For Web Scaffolders" wasn't catchy enough.

(Can't edit. I meant the word "powerful," not the language PHP).

I don't like their code and architecture though. The code is ugly because it is built around static methods instead of proper OOP, and uses magic methods a lot. It is not easy to read.

Also, they love to invent their own names for existing things. For example, they named a folder with interfaces as "Contracts", although there are only interfaces.

You are using "Ruby on Rails" as some sign of quality, but if it uses magic and static methods like Laravel, I would consider it ugly too. Also, I remember reading somewhere that they were hotpatching imported modules. Luckily in PHP you cannot do it.

> it is built around static methods instead of proper OOP

The fake case against Laravel that never dies . The truth is found in the docs: https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/facades

> Facades provide a "static" interface to classes that are available in the application's service container. Laravel ships with many facades which provide access to almost all of Laravel's features. Laravel facades serve as "static proxies" to underlying classes in the service container, providing the benefit of a terse, expressive syntax while maintaining more testability and flexibility than traditional static methods.

What isn't fake is that Laravel uses magic methods everywhere, especially in the ORM layer.

There are way too many magic things happening under the hood for my taste.

Magic methods in PHP are very commonly used to help reduce code verbosity - having come from working mostly in C++ I appreciate being able to express things succinctly.

Much more important for code, especially library code is readability

Laravel is moving away from magic methods to using facades, FWIW.

The static methods you are seeing are by and large facades -- convenience methods -- but Laravel is still absolutely "proper OOP."

https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/facades

"Contract" is not a term they invented; it's a term from "design by contract programming," and Laravel enforces the "contracts" through interfaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_contract

(And, no, they did not invent the term "facade," either.)

If you think Rails is ugly you're going to have to frame this with what you think is beautiful so we know where you're coming from.

Rails does take a lot of established concepts like MVC and mangles them pretty badly, but the Rails version of MVC works well in practice if you're willing to overlook how unconventional it is. The beauty is not in the adherence to dogma, but the day-to-day experience of using it when you know how it works.

It takes surprisingly little code to do some complex things in Rails. I'm working with GraphQL now and it's stupid easy to build out an API with Rails.

Laravel might seem all sorts of "wrong" to someone who has expectations of "how things should be", but the Laravel way, when accepted for what it is, works. It provides structure and cohesion which in the PHP world is in extremely short supply.