In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel. Taylor shares insights on his journey from creating Laravel in his free time to building a strong community and user base. He discusses Laravel’s growth, including the major features and tools that were developed over the years. Taylor also shares his outlook on the PHP ecosystem, productivity tips, and plans for Laravel Cloud, a new deployment platform for PHP and Laravel applications. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:29 Laracon 03:13 Laravel’s inspiration and features Intertia Livewire 07:18 Why don’t we have a “Laravel for JavaScript”? 09:02 What parts of Laravel came first? 10:07 The Laravel ecosystem Forge Vapor 12:29 Laravel Cloud 14:00 What parts of Laravel are Intertia and what parts are React? 15:57 How many people are using Laravel? 16:59 Taylor’s productivity and development philosophy 24:43 Brought to you by Sentry.io 25:19 What makes a beautiful API? 29:33 Taylor’s thoughts on typing PHP 30:41 Features Taylor would like to see in PHP 33:03 What people get wrong about modern PHP 34:22 PHP stacks and CMSs Nginx FrankenPHP Statamic 37:30 Taylor’s thoughts on WordPress 38:14 Lambo memes 43:44 Taylor’s coding setup Sublime Text Vs Code 45:36 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs Sick Picks Taylor: Tiny Glade No Man’s Sky Shameless Plugs Taylor: Laravel Cloud Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads