4 ms·

I've stopped using since Laravel 5.4, switched to Symfony 2.8 up to now (5.0) and recently also Flask or Django (at least for back end). My biggest pains were

I've stopped using since Laravel 5.4, switched to Symfony 2.8 up to now (5.0) and recently also Flask or Django (at least for back end). My biggest pains were the facades and also I wasn't a big fan of the Active Records (with the empty classes and only doing autocomplete by regularly generating loads of annotations). Being a freelancer and the increasing popularity, I suppose it's worth taking a look again. Though I'm still a bit hesitant to use it for my own long-term projects, especially since there are so many breaking changes and there are some side projects I won't be able to update for 3 to 12 months while I work freelance or build up new projects. Can anyone share their experience using + updating a Laravel-based website which is at least 2 years old, especially regarding maintainability?

dzonga 7y ago
you get a lot of freelancing opportunities using flask ?
- kugelblitz 7y ago
  No, not really. It was my entry point into Python, now I use Django mostly. PHP opportunities are much more. I like using Symfony, though I also get Laravel or E-Commerce (e.g. Shopware, Spryker) offers. But of course this is because my profile is PHP / JS, so I get these offers. Though Node.js as back end is noticeably increasing.
justanotherc 7y ago
I was turned off of Laravel from a bad experience of the very reason you're afraid of it. Back in 2017 I was hired to take over a large Laravel 4.2 project, which included upgrading it to 5.0+ version. The upgrade was a very long, extremely painful experience, and Laravel itself progressed from 5.0 to 5.2 during our upgrade so it was like trying to hit a moving target. I know there is a lot of capability wrapped up in the framework which enables rapid development, but for long lived applications, you're going to spend a not-insignificant amount of your time keeping up with upgrades. So in a sense, the framework itself becomes technical debt. That makes it a bad framework from my point of view. Your code base should not be forced to be so tightly coupled to the framework that you have to spend time updating it to keep up with the framework versions (or get stuck on an old version).
- kugelblitz 7y ago
  Yeah, my first Laravel application (actually my first use of a framework) was Laravel 4.2 because my personal project was getting more and more complex. When I wanted to upgrade, reading this did make me wonder a bit: "The recommended method of upgrading is to create a new Laravel 5.0 install and then to copy your 4.2 site's unique application files into the new application. This would include controllers, routes, Eloquent models, Artisan commands, assets, and other code specific to your application." My worry was: "Do I have to do this with every version??!" Fortunately not, but the updates did take some time; I still updated a few minor versions before moving to Symfony.
kindly_fo 7y ago
I have 4 years old project. Currently stacked at 5.5 (5.2->5.3->5.5), because updating to 5.8 had some issues with socialite logins. But main issue was the new jwt token package version completely change how it's working. Having android app users that rely on old jwt package, I don't have much motivation to upgrade to new version and wasting lots of time and having headache. Imo easier will be to completely move to other framework. Especially since I really don't like laravel facades.

dzonga 7y ago

you get a lot of freelancing opportunities using flask ?

kugelblitz 7y ago
No, not really. It was my entry point into Python, now I use Django mostly. PHP opportunities are much more. I like using Symfony, though I also get Laravel or E-Commerce (e.g. Shopware, Spryker) offers. But of course this is because my profile is PHP / JS, so I get these offers. Though Node.js as back end is noticeably increasing.

justanotherc 7y ago

I was turned off of Laravel from a bad experience of the very reason you're afraid of it. Back in 2017 I was hired to take over a large Laravel 4.2 project, which included upgrading it to 5.0+ version. The upgrade was a very long, extremely painful experience, and Laravel itself progressed from 5.0 to 5.2 during our upgrade so it was like trying to hit a moving target. I know there is a lot of capability wrapped up in the framework which enables rapid development, but for long lived applications, you're going to spend a not-insignificant amount of your time keeping up with upgrades. So in a sense, the framework itself becomes technical debt. That makes it a bad framework from my point of view. Your code base should not be forced to be so tightly coupled to the framework that you have to spend time updating it to keep up with the framework versions (or get stuck on an old version).

kugelblitz 7y ago
Yeah, my first Laravel application (actually my first use of a framework) was Laravel 4.2 because my personal project was getting more and more complex. When I wanted to upgrade, reading this did make me wonder a bit: "The recommended method of upgrading is to create a new Laravel 5.0 install and then to copy your 4.2 site's unique application files into the new application. This would include controllers, routes, Eloquent models, Artisan commands, assets, and other code specific to your application." My worry was: "Do I have to do this with every version??!" Fortunately not, but the updates did take some time; I still updated a few minor versions before moving to Symfony.

kindly_fo 7y ago

I have 4 years old project. Currently stacked at 5.5 (5.2->5.3->5.5), because updating to 5.8 had some issues with socialite logins. But main issue was the new jwt token package version completely change how it's working. Having android app users that rely on old jwt package, I don't have much motivation to upgrade to new version and wasting lots of time and having headache. Imo easier will be to completely move to other framework. Especially since I really don't like laravel facades.