If you want to develop in PHP, which is the most widespread programming language in the use of servers, you are practically obliged to learn Laravel; Laravel is an excellent option to learn as soon as you have the opportunity, it is an all-in-one framework, with an immense API, and what the framework does not provide, there are powerful packages that do not leave you in a bad position and allow you to save a lot of work by programming them manual way:

1. Breeze: A package that we install almost as soon as we create the project and allows us to have a simple and flexible authentication system in the project, by default, it also installs Tailwind as a modern CSS framework so that we can use it throughout the entire application. Also, we can choose if we want it to use Vue, React or Blade to create the visual elements, that is, buttons, form fields... everything that is in the client.
2. Spatie: An excellent package to protect the application through roles and permissions
3. Jetstream: to be able to create SPA websites using Blade+Alpine or with Vue, that is, integrate some of these technologies together with Laravel with a single command.

These are just to mention a few packages, but there are many more packages available and very useful for Laravel.

Laravel is such a famous framework that it is more famous than its programming language, which is PHP, that is, it is more sought after than PHP itself.

Laravel, apart from having a huge ecosystem as we mentioned, a large active community, excellent documentation and many packages, not counting the native packages for PHP, we can also have the ENTIRE Node ecosystem at our disposal, that is, a project in Laravel . , also has an integrated Node project.

Therefore, we can use Laravel on the backend or on the server side and Node with any package that we want to install on the client side, that is, on the frontend.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP framework, a framework with many functionalities included to handle various situations such as the creation of APIs, complete management modules, form validation, an MVC in its core to manage applications, use of components to create independent or small parts pieces of code, something similar to what we have in Vue and a lot of great packages to make our lives easier; In short, it is a PHP framework designed to address any type of web application today.

Ideal Scenarios to Learn Laravel

In this blog, you will find a lot of material to learn how to develop in Laravel in a very simple, direct way; You can find everything from publications to books on Laravel and free and paid courses with which you can learn MORE than the basics of this popular and immense framework.

In general, on the Internet you can find a lot of material, as it is a framework with a long time on the market and with a large community you will always find something interesting to learn or implement with Laravel.

How long does it take to learn Laravel?

This is where we start to put our feet on the ground, Laravel is a HUGE framework, with many options, its environment is complex and was difficult to manage, although, one of the great advantages that all versions of Laravel bring us, that is , in the latest versions of Laravel the installation process of the Laravel environment has increasingly been facilitated, before, in MacOS it was valet, which is an environment managed by commands, in Windows it was impossible, until they launched a connection with the Linux subsystem, then Laragon (which is not the official environment) and in MacOS, Sail with Docker until reaching Laravel Herd, which is considered the definitive environment to develop, since, the latter, unlike the previous ones, it is not necessary to execute a single command if not , for advantages, basic and typical installation next, next... and very friendly.

But... as for programming, as we mentioned before, the bases of the framework are the same and each version of Laravel either changes current packages or adds more features to existing ones, which sounds excellent, and it is, but, to learn, It means that for each version of Laravel we have more options which can make learning difficult, so yes, learning Laravel is not easy, but, with a correct guide you can learn it although it will take time, know the use of routes, controllers, views . , configuration files, craft, components among others, it will take a while, but the good news is that, surely every time you get to know these fascinating technologies, you will want to learn more and more and you will like it more.

A time may be difficult to give, but estimate that more than 100 hours will be necessary to know these bases, create at least a couple of basic projects with some characteristics, and from this point, you will be able to learn more features of the framework.

What should you know before working with Laravel?

Laravel is an advanced framework, unlike CodeIgniter, you must have knowledge of the evil trilogy of course, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, also have good foundations in PHP and as a personal recommendation, it becomes easier if you already work on another framework like CodeIgniter, as we mentioned previously.

Why learn Laravel? o Is it worth learning Laravel? What skills should I have?

If you want to develop in PHP, which is one of the most versatile programming languages, if not the most versatile in the development of server-side applications, Laravel, the one that is more famous than its own programming language, cannot pass unnoticed, and the truth is that it is a bit unfortunate, but, if it were not for Laravel, PHP frameworks could be considered almost dead.

Laravel's fame is not free, it is an excellent framework for developing all types of applications, especially large applications and efficiently and quickly, that is, the time to implement any application will be less if you do such development manually, and this is due to the excellent packages that the framework has available.

So yes, a resounding yes I highly recommend that you learn to develop in Laravel, as for the skills, I already mentioned them in the previous section.

The bad thing about Laravel

The bad thing about Laravel is that it has a high learning curve if you have not programmed in another framework, it is a framework in constant evolution and therefore aspects of it change, although the good news is that they are in form but not in substance. , that is, they are changes to new packages, some additional functionalities but without sacrificing its bases.

As your first PHP framework I recommend CodeIgniter, the reasons are here:

CodeIgniter 4, the best framework for beginners

Or Flask may also be an excellent option:

Flask, an ideal microframework to get started in web development

Although, the recommended one would be Codeigniter as it is also a PHP-based framework.

From this, you can go on to develop in Laravel which has many similarities with the two frameworks that we mentioned before, especially with CodeIgniter, which has a very similar but obviously more simplified modularization.

CodeIgniter is a Laravel Lite.

Another aspect that I personally don't like about Laravel is that sometimes they sell a new feature as if it were a panacea, and shortly after they eliminate it or release an improved version, as happened with Laravel UI, which was replaced by Laravel Breeze and a little happens with Docker and Laravel Sail, although the latter is not a replacement for the first, since we can use Docker in production, due to the order in which these tools were presented, it sometimes feels that development in Laravel is going one step further. little hurried and messy.

Another example of lack of control in Laravel is with the Inertia and Livewire packages, which renamed several internal components to them, which although they were in an early phase of development, does not feel correct, and in the case of Limewire we can go further. there, as we mentioned, Livewire allows you to create SPA-type pages, internally, Livewire allows you to update the state of an HTML element with some attribute in HTML; In the first version BY DEFAULT, it was applied every time a field was updated, a request was automatically sent to the server to update the state, which is quite inefficient as you might think, in the next version of Livewire they did a 180 degree turn and now it works as it should have worked initially and that is BY DEFAULT, the server state is not updated.

Another aspect that I don't like too much about Laravel is the use of major versions, every year starting in February a major version appears, come on, as if it were the new iPhone for the year, a situation that often seems forced and generally The only thing they present are new packages or technologies that accompany the Laravel ecosystem and certain package updates, making it difficult for us to make queries to the Internet, sometimes we can see an implementation that is not valid with the current version of Laravel, we go as if it were Android fragmentation.

Laravel releases a major version every year just like Apple releases an iPhone every year.

Questions that people may have about developing in Laravel
Laravel in Spain

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