I wrote an API at work which was originally written in Laravel because it was fast to prototype in. I've since replaced it with my own "framework" which is mos

I wrote an API at work which was originally written in Laravel because it was fast to prototype in. I've since replaced it with my own "framework" which is mostly a very thin wrapper for several really good packages (router, DI container, events dispatcher and query builder wrapper). I'm getting 10x performance out of it than I was with Laravel, and overall it's a very small codebase which is easy to understand and test. So yes, no one "has to roll their own framework in PHP", but there sure are advantages to do so if you know exactly what you need and how to get there.