It's not a matter of personal opinion, it's a fact that the data mapper pattern (like doctrine) allows for a better and more maintainable architecture than acti

It's not a matter of personal opinion, it's a fact that the data mapper pattern (like doctrine) allows for a better and more maintainable architecture than active record. Separating the data access layer, the models and the business logic (basically a 3-tier architecture) is a widely used and proven industry standard to keep a sane, maintainable and testable codebase. Active record ORMs like Eloquent mixes everything in a single layer (business logic in the model events, data accesses are done by the models), but as soon as you reach a significant level of complexity, it is unmaintainable. Even Laravel codebases that grow in complexity often ends-up wrapping Eloquent in a repository layer.