My company has dropped Laravel for Symphony :(

Maybe a next change will make Laravel come back in you company ;)

Sorry, I worded that wrong, the company I work for I meant. And yeah, I hope so. I think I will continue with it anyway on personal stuff.

I agree, that L5 is a different "level" framework compared to the L4, but...

As it has lot of features, most of them do not have to be used. If needed, you can still code in CI style with L5.

So the company wanted to switch to Laravel 5 but it was too different and costly?

Why not stay with Laravel 4? Also, if your team already know it well and it's going to take some time to learn Laravel 5, just wait a year or so and let the team get to grips with it in their own time. Laravel 5 will be running for a few years if not longer.

I don't understand how L5 is deal-breakingly different? Everything you could do in L4 you can continue to do. Do you have any specific examples, or is this a knee jerk reaction to the folder structure?

L5 really is L4 with a cleaned up internal api, and some very nifty code generators. I find digging into L5 source to be exponentially less confusing than L4 source. Contracts tell you how to use the pieces of the robot. I guess I can see how this site focuses on abstraction, but I don't see that as a detractor. If you want to use facades directly in your controllers no one is going to stop you, and it still works perfectly fine.

While my company is invested in Laravel and we will be upgrading, I can see why L5 is a deal breaker for many. L5 is more 'advanced' and in someways closer to Symphony in its approach (though still not as big). Some companies may say now 'lets just go with Symphony'. On the other end of the spectrum, where L4 was designed to be comfortable and simple first but advanced architecturally IF you wanted it, L5 seems complex and foreign to most developers right out of the box. It is inspired by experts for experts. Personally I REALLY hope that Laravel keeps its momentum both at the 'blog' level and the corporate level. I know Jeffery has been working overtime to show developers how easy it is IF they want it to be. I think that Taylor has made bold move in L5. I like bold advancement and it will be inspiring if his boldness pays off.

This makes no sense. Symfony is far more confusing than Laravel.

and the way Jeffery teaches is as if we're all going to be building large business apps and we need to understand every design pattern under the sun.

What?? Have you watched the Laravel 5 Fundamentals series? Go watch it. I'm usually the one saying that you don't need some of these architecture styles for the huge majority of projects. Check out the podcast. We talk about this a lot.

A lesson that covers a design pattern...is a lesson that covers a design pattern. Nothing more. Learning that stuff is good for you.

And seriously folks, Laravel 5 is easier than Laravel 4. It's not some massive change. The API is almost identical.

Yea this is a very strange reason to not use L5. There must be a misunderstanding or something more to this story.

That's really sad. In my opinion Laravel is awesome and L5 makes it even better. Don't see much complexity there, though.

It's hard for me to imagine that teams switch like that on a whim. Especially without really having enough time to evaluate, and acting on ignorance or misinformation.

i find L5 much easier to use and its cleaned up version of L4. I dont think it will take a lot of effort to switch to L5 from L4.

As someone with little experience out in the real world of coding but lots of experience as a student, I find Laravel way easier to understand than Symfony. If anything, I would be concerned about Laravel becoming too easy (catering to new developers). By this I am referring to it coming with default auth scaffolding, built in form requests, built in commands/events structure, easy middlewares, easy service providers, etc. that before I had to learn from Jeffrey how to write my own. People new to the framework won't need to learn so much but instead just use what comes with the framework. I see this as dumbing down the framework.

I recently started learning Symfony and the thing I like about it is that it's more complicated to understand IMHO but that's coming from the point of view of someone thirsty for PHP knowledge.

Agree with Jeffrey and the other above. Laravel 5 is not more difficult than Laravel 4. There are a few changes, that's true. But if they are understandable for me as a single developer with only a little and recent experience with Laravel, it shouldn't be a problem for a professional team of developers at all.

I'm your typical designer/front-end dev with little more than basic WP dev knowledge and I don't find L5 and more daunting than L4 was. Also, I've not had much time to do anything than other than basic pages and controllers as I've been waiting for L5.

The point point I am trying to make, mainly in regards to @larapetit reply, as a design focused front-end coder I'm really don't find the barrier to L5 any worse than L4. I don't think new dev's will be put off by L5 as much as they might be by Symphony.

I guess core of the problem is when you try to upgrade old project to Laravel 5 all packages brake and you get stuck with fact that you do not have support for anything you essentially need, start to panic and pull the plug.

... when you try to upgrade old project to Laravel 5 all packages brake and you get stuck ...

There is a difference between support and optimization.

Why do people feel the need they have to upgrade?

ETA:

Or better yet. Explain this optimization to the business. Go. Good luck.

I agree with the fact that there are some important changes but nobody is forcing you to use L5. You can stick with L4 by the way. I've seen many tutorials in my life and, in my opinion, Jeffrey Way is the best tutor I ever listened to, by far. So, you have an incredibly useful learning support through these lessons and also the documentation is very well organized (yes, it could be a little improved in some areas but, for me, it is nearly perfect). Changes are good and bring a lot of benefits because, remember: WITHOUT INNOVATION THERE IS NO EVOLUTION!!! These changes come because Laravel tries to conform to the best coding and modern practices. I don't know your company and, frankly, I don't care but you can tell them better to stick with procedural PHP because things might change and it's a very fucking dangerous thing.

Only one question related with the excuse of change:

"...we need to understand every design pattern under the sun..."

Is then under Symfony no needed to know Design Patterns? I think for get knowledge about Symfony as advanced developer you need to know basic Design Patterns, and not only basics you need to know some of the Architecture and Enterprise Patterns without fear to them.

IMHO that is would not be the real question under that change.

To the respect to the Jeffrey Way Laracasts lessons, there are basic Laravel and PHP lessons and some more advanced. Anyone is free to learn according their needs.

We will nice to give you the welcome to Laravel again.

I think he's been smacked off the Magic Escalator of Acquired Knowledge

If your company wants to get back to Laravel, you could try the new Laracasts business plans. So your entire team could enjoy Jeffrey's videos. Personally I don't think moving to Symfony makes things less complicated, though.

I don't see why exactly - L5 is very scalable and well documented (the contracts doc blocks are awesome) and to be honest i believe your company is misjudging a lot of stuff, L5 is not released yet (at least not on dist), Laracast is only finishing the Fundamentals on Laravel 5, it didn't covered it's full potential and benefits yet and still...if your company knowledge wants to stay obsolete - than well you'd better open your eyes for which kind of company you are working for. At least in my company i try to motivate everyone to learn and look for new things, I don't want mediocre.

Now speaking as developer, I think L5 is much easier than L4 and as a former Java developer, things make much more sense for me.

Stay in L4...

BTW, it is "SYMFONY" (not Symphony)

The project manager here, and some of the team, feel the recent changes in Laravel are a deal breaker.

What is wrong with these people ? Nothing is more complicated with L5.

I agree, that L5 is a different "level" framework compared to the L4, but I love it.

I disagree. Things are just more explicit.

If you want to make a basic routes / controllers / models / views app this is exactly the same thing.

I really wish that Jeffery wrote the Laravel docs.

@ training What kind of training does your company offer?

@ jumping ship Is it just that the dev team feels more comfortable in SF2?

@imageek obviously no insight into what you are facing in your company, but echo some of what has been said before but here are a couple of bullets points for your management:

1. symphony is a great php architecture, no question there, but it is by no means less complicated than Laravel. There might be reasons to move, but complexity is not one of them.
2. cost and quality of training? Laracasts is a what a $100 bucks a year? How is that too steep for a company? Assuming you have 20 developers which is a large dev team you are speaking about $2000? A company with 20 developers that is not prepared to pay that for dev training has much bigger issues. That said, how will symphony be less? Unless there is a $1 store for php training?
3. what @JefferyWay teaches are development principles that can be applied to any language. Yes it is expressed in Laravel, but you express those same principles in JavaScript or C#, etc. In fact, I can personallytestify that what I've learned here and from the community has improved my JS development skills 10x.
4. How are good development practices a bad thing for a company with 1 person or a person with a 100? OOP, SOLID, DRY, etc. are not Jeff's principles but industry accepted principles. They are accepted by developers because they have been tested in battle.
5. Probably the most important - productivity = money and in the case of your company I would think well trained developers all trained on the same solid principles would mean a better workflow, predictability and consistency. That means faster time to market and better quality code. The development principles taught here are not taught because they sound good or look good, they are taught because they make you a more effective and efficient developer.

Look at when ever an OS changes the GUI a bit. Peoples first reaction is this is garbage. Never mind the performance upgrades and usually faster way to get around, but their folders are in a different spot or different name and the world just can to an end. I hear more complaining on what middleware is and during L5 development the route annotations being a deal breaker. Yet annotations are extremely efficient and speed up production a lot.

I admit when I created a new app and it showed up as L5 I freaked!

But I am now about half way through J Way's series and not threatened by it as much as I used to be. But, (and I could be wrong here) it seems that we have to "Laravel Require" certain things like the Form Facades and such. In my opinion, that should be in the packing list from the start. What app doesn't have a form?

Just my $.02 Anyways Thanks J Way for slowin' down a bit and not "Vim"ing the crap out of it... I really do find my $9 worth it.

What app doesn't have a form?

None. But you can create forms with HTML. :) If you want an opinionated form class, you can pull one in. Takes thirty seconds.

Thanks J Way for slowin' down a bit and not "Vim"ing the crap out of it

Yeah, the new "L5 Fundamentals" is much better than the old series. Using Vim was a bad choice for that situation.

A lot of posters mention the relative technical merits of Laravel vs Symfony and there are a lot of questions about why a company would return to Symfony. I think an important point is being missed: this decision may have little to do with the technical quality of Laravel, or indeed even for that matter with Symfony.

Commercial organisations with even medium sized teams make enormous $$ investments in knowledge. This is an intangible yet, very expensive asset. The cost of change can be enormous both in terms of direct costs as well as indirect costs. The productivity gains from any new technology has to overwhelming.

Furthermore, development teams are always under huge pressure to deliver their products faster and faster. The last thing a CIO needs is a show down with the VP of sales over a release date. That is a show down the CIO will never win.

So when a prospective move from Symfony to Laravel is perceived as a hurdle to productivity, well, it will be the first thing that gets cancelled no matter how much "better" Laravel might be.

Essentially this is one of the major reasons why personally I adopting Laravel: Laracasts reduces the cost of change. Having said that I agree that I wish Jeffrey could rewrite the Laravel docs. The single most valuable thing about CodeIgniter is their outstanding docs.