Laravel: Our Preferred Development Platform

Not as exotic as you think it is.

So what’s so great about Laravel? What’s so valuable about the way that we—BKWLD—prefer to develop our projects?

In a nutshell, it has to do with leaving as many options open as possible, while still approaching common tasks with efficiency in mind. While still adhering to a better-than-best-practice workflow. While still aspiring to cutting-edge—or at least modern—ideas with regards to developing and deploying complex web applications.

It guides us while staying out of our way. Golden Rule vs. Ten Commandments.

Ultimately, however, there’s something very (very) real to the notion of not having to take something we mostly like—settling for something—and undoing part of it so that we can complete our task. Why undo stuff? Why create a current just to swim against it?

The Laravel documentation sums things up quite nicely. At the top of page one. This is the first thing they say:

Laravel is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Laravel attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.

Laravel aims to make the development process a pleasing one for the developer without sacrificing application functionality. Happy developers make the best code. To this end, we’ve attempted to combine the very best of what we have seen in other web frameworks, including frameworks implemented in other languages, such as Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET MVC, and Sinatra.

Laravel is accessible, yet powerful, providing powerful tools needed for large, robust applications. A superb inversion of control container, expressive migration system, and tightly integrated unit testing support give you the tools you need to build any application with which you are tasked.

If we were talking about our creative process, or our fence-building or dog-grooming or babysitting process, this is the sort of thing we would say. If there are ways to work smart, let’s work smart. If there are ways to ease the pain of everyday or otherwise cumbersome tasks, then let’s do that.

But let’s not try and develop a process that’s going to enforce a singular idea or structure onto all projects, objects, fences, dogs, or babies—old, current, and new—because that’s probably not the best way to go about it.

You’re presumably interested in us because we listen to you when you talk. We’re not just staring into your face, nodding our heads, wondering how we’re going to make what we have masquerade as what you want.

We promise.

Technical Summary
* Runs on PHP 5.3.7+ [stable/supported] and MySQL 5+
* PRO: Data models are allowed to be standardized, human-readable, and portable.
* PRO: Frontend is restriction-free.
* PRO: Developer-determined routes
* PRO: Open-model
* PRO: Modern deployment for easy cloning
* CON: Not designed to get base-model up quickly and painlessly
* CON: Binds development team to strategy and creative teams
* CON: Potential (but not certainty) for higher-wage maintenance resource

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