Frequent Updates Might Not Even Be The Most Weirdest Thing About Laravel

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks in the world, widely loved for its elegant syntax, powerful features, and ease of use. However, like every technology, it has its quirks—some of which can seem downright weird!

I want to hear from you: What do you find weird about Laravel? Is it something about its architecture, its updates, or a strange bug you once encountered? Let's discuss it!

My Take on Laravel's Weirdness

Personally, the weirdest thing about Laravel is its frequent updates! Just when you think you've mastered one version, boom—a new version drops!

Laravel 9 was released in 2022, and before many could fully master it, Laravel 10 was out in early 2023. And now, Laravel 11 is here, packed with more features and breaking changes that require developers to keep learning and adapting. While updates are great for security and performance, the fast-paced nature of Laravel’s evolution can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially for beginners or teams managing long-term projects.

Another thing I find unusual about Laravel is how much magic happens under the hood. The framework simplifies so much that sometimes developers don’t fully understand what’s happening behind the scenes. This can be both a blessing and a curse—while it makes development faster, debugging can become a nightmare when things go wrong.

Other Weird Things About Laravel

Here are some other things that developers have found weird or unusual about Laravel:

1. Facades are confusing at first – Laravel’s use of facades (like DB::table() instead of traditional object instantiation) is great for simplicity but can be confusing for developers coming from other frameworks. They seem like static methods but work dynamically.
2. Eloquent is powerful but can be tricky – Laravel's ORM, Eloquent, is fantastic for database interactions, but it can sometimes result in unexpected queries, especially with lazy loading. A simple mistake like forgetting to eager load related models can cause performance issues.
3. Blade templates look too much like plain HTML – While Laravel’s Blade templating engine is great, newcomers often wonder if they’re writing plain HTML or Laravel-specific code. The @ directives, like @if and @foreach, blend into HTML so smoothly that it sometimes feels a little too seamless.
4. Route caching issues – Laravel provides route caching for performance improvement, but if you forget to clear the cache after adding new routes, your new changes won’t work, leading to confusion.
5. Too many helper functions – Laravel comes with an extensive list of helper functions, like str_slug(), app_path(), and abort(). While they’re useful, there are so many of them that it can be hard to remember which ones exist or when to use them.

Final Thoughts

Despite its quirks, Laravel remains one of the best PHP frameworks available. Its rapid development cycle, extensive documentation, and large community support make it a solid choice for modern web development. But that doesn’t mean it’s without its weirdness!

Now it’s your turn! What’s the weirdest thing you’ve noticed about Laravel? Let’s discuss this in the comments.

I Remain Emmykolic – you can always reach out to me! Till next time, Bye! 🚀