Hello Jeffrey, I’m exactly the kind of beginner you describe in your video. I know what an h1 tag is, I can style it with CSS (though I still have to look up every single time whether . or # is for classes). That’s my starting point.

Like many newcomers today, I began “vibe coding” with AI tools. With ChatGPT, Claude, and even Codex, I managed to put together a Docker-hosted MVP for a hobby association to manage meeting agendas—in just a couple of days. That was my first win. It didn’t mean I suddenly understood programming, but it did mean I could make something real, something useful. And that lit the spark: “Now I want to learn how this actually works.”

That’s how I landed in your 30 Days to Learn Laravel course. I skipped the entire “Learn PHP First” path and jumped straight into Laravel. I’m currently on Day 16, and the course has been fantastic. I especially appreciate the way you teach: let us do something practical first, let us stumble into errors, then add depth by refining or correcting what we’ve already built. It mirrors how I’ve seen people learn best in other fields.

Because here’s some context: I’ve been a teacher for most of my adult life. At 18, I was training recruits in army bootcamps. Today, I train young apprentices in my hotel—future cooks, servers, receptionists, and housekeepers. And across those very different environments, two principles have held true:

The teaching loop is simple but powerful:

Show them how to do it → Do it together → Supervise them doing it alone. That’s how soldiers learned to strip a rifle. That’s how my apprentices learn to set a table. And that’s how coding beginners, I believe, should learn too.

Motivation comes from early wins. In the army, we used to drill recruits for weeks on rifle maintenance before they ever fired a shot. It was orderly, but it killed morale.

What works better in a setting where you don't have draconic disciplinary procedure at your disposal?

Let them fire the rifle once under heavy supervision, then go back and teach all the intricacies. The motivation comes from that first real experience.

My chef apprentices aren’t inspired by lectures on the steel compositions of chef's knifes or the Maillard reaction and its importance to make a perfect steak, on day one. What makes them beam with pride is cooking a good steak for their parents, or slicing vegetables with precision in front of guests. Those early wins make them hungry for the deeper knowledge later.

That’s why, in my view, starting with PHP first risks draining a beginner’s motivation. At my level, I don’t care how to manually connect to a database in raw PHP. I want to build something that looks and feels like real software. I want to impress my coworkers, friends—and, if I’m really lucky and she has an exceptional day, my wife.

Laravel makes that possible. No, I don’t yet understand what every file in my project does. Yes, I run into constant errors and ask AI for help multiple times a day. But that process—hitting walls, asking questions, solving problems—is exactly what keeps me learning. Each error is just another chance to understand one more piece.

And here’s the most important point: I couldn’t even tell you right now what’s “vanilla PHP” and what’s “Laravel magic.” And honestly, I don’t care.

At this stage, all I want is to get this form to post to that database and then display that view, just so I can feel that rush of satisfaction: I did it.

So here’s my conclusion: For true beginners like me, Laravel first is the way to go. It gets us to that MVP quickly, fuels motivation with visible progress, and naturally leads us back to PHP fundamentals once curiosity kicks in. The early wins matter more than the perfect sequence of concepts.

Should You Learn Laravel Before PHP?