After learning React Server Components, I had a strange realization: we've come back to where we started. Server-side rendering, SQL in templates, zero client JavaScript—it sounds like PHP circa 2005. But is it really the same? A reflection on 20 years of web development coming full circle.
After months with Laravel 5.6, I had built complete applications — Blade UIs, REST APIs, email, SMS, background jobs. A reflection on what Laravel taught me about web development, and why it prepared me for everything that came after.
Sending daily reports, cleaning up old files, expiring unused tokens — all the recurring tasks your app needs. Learn Laravel's scheduler, which turns ugly cron syntax into expressive PHP methods.
Sending emails, processing uploads, generating reports — all things that slow down your app. Learn to use Laravel queues, create jobs, handle failures, and make your application feel instant while heavy work happens in the background.
Database queries are expensive. API calls are slow. Learn to cache the expensive stuff — with Redis, Memcached, or just files. Cache tags, cache invalidation, and the patterns that made my Laravel apps actually fast.
My app had beautiful Blade templates. But mobile developers needed JSON, not HTML. Learn to build REST APIs in Laravel alongside your web routes, handle API authentication, transform responses, and serve both worlds from one codebase.
Handling file uploads the right way. Learn Laravel's filesystem abstraction — store files locally in development, S3 in production, switch with one config change. No more hardcoded paths and manual file management.
Some notifications can't wait for users to check their inbox. Learn to integrate SMS into Laravel with Nexmo/Vonage and Twilio, handle delivery status, manage costs, and decide when SMS is actually worth it.
No more 'run this SQL file I emailed you.' Migrations track database changes in code. Seeders fill your database with test data. Together, they make database management sane and shareable.
Cache::get(), Mail::send(), Auth::user() — they look like static methods, but they're not. Understanding facades and the service container unlocked how Laravel actually works under the hood.
My controllers were doing too much. Create order, send email, update inventory, notify warehouse, log analytics — all in one method. Events and listeners taught me to decouple, and suddenly everything was cleaner.
My PHP mail() days were over. Laravel's Mailable classes, notification system, and queue workers transformed how I thought about user communication. Beautiful emails, multiple channels, all from one notification class.
After weeks of building login systems from scratch, I discovered Laravel's built-in authentication. One command, and I had registration, login, password reset, and middleware protection. The day I stopped reinventing the wheel.
Users have posts. Posts have comments. Orders have products. Learn to define and query relationships in Eloquent — hasMany, belongsTo, many-to-many, and the magical eager loading that saves you from the N+1 problem.
Before React, before Spring Boot, there was Laravel. How I went from writing spaghetti PHP to understanding MVC architecture, Blade templates, and why frameworks exist. A journey back to early 2019 when everything clicked.