Laravel
An eminently understandable application framework built on opinionated conventions and PHP.
Laravel fits in really well with a lot of the other work that Harmonic Northwest does in large part because of the use of PHP at its core. PHP happens to be the same coding language that underpins WordPress and Magento, both of which we work with extensively. When we need to extend the functionality of a site and make it more “web app-y”, Laravel keeps us in the same general ballpark and reduces the need for bringing in a different set of developers to work on a project. We simply love Laravel.
Understandable, logical syntax
If you are a developer coming from a background in Ruby on Rails or Django, you’ll immediately recognize Laravel’s viewpoint on how code should be structured. Laravel has strong opinions on how configuration should work and those opinions make a lot of sense. You think less about your boilerplate and have an easier time jumping into new codebases than you would in most other platforms.
You down with MVC?
(affirmative, you are acquainted with me)
Part of the understandability of Laravel is its use of the tried-and-true Model-View-Controller framework used by many popular application frameworks that came before it. This setup puts longtime developers at ease whilst adventuring deep within complex codebases.
It’s already built in!
All the features you need are probably already in Laravel without the need for seeking out and vetting third-party libraries. Authentication, routing, task scheduling, object relational mapping and dynamic templating are all built in. Laravel Forge provisions and deploys to servers. Laravel Nova creates elegant admin panels. Laravel Sanctum and Laravel Passport adeptly handle API authentication.
The Laravel core team maintains the most important libraries within the framework to help ensure those libraries remain up to date, secure and seamlessly compatible with other tools and the framework at large.
¡Viva la PHP!
Version 8 of PHP is a powerhouse that rivals any and all other coding languages. Laravel uses the newest and best features of modern PHP to ensure its platform keeps up with modern coding practices. This includes object-oriented modular architecture, first class dependency management, strong support for test-driven development and services that can be bound as singletons, factories or scoped. We’re big big fans of PHP at Harmonic Northwest.
