Laravel and 3rd Party Frameworks
In this article I will be discussing and breaking down my journey through Laravel over the last few years. Where I am and where I want to be. How the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is real. Some of the challenges faced as Laravel has pushed forward with newer technologies and frameworks.
Where it all started
For the last 8 or so years Laravel has been my goto backend framework. Originally, when I started, the base package for UI Scaffholding was laravel/ui. I always found it simplistic, it came with Bootstrap 4 out of the box, which I was already confident in using. With the evolution of the Laravel, several things started to change. I will explain those in this article and explain what my next steps are to keep up with changes.
What has changed?
Starting in 2020, the Laravel Team came out with Laravel 8 and a new package called laravel/jetstream. This was not necessarily replace laravel/ui but in my opinion, superseed it. Out of the box it had many configurable options for Teams, Multi-Factor Authentication, Profile Management and more.
For me, this was a bit of a disappointment. Why you might ask? Well, it came with TailwindCSS out of the box, support for InertiaJS and NextJS. These are some technologies I was new too and had little exposure, if any too. Taylor and the Laravel team listened to community feedback and decided to released a slimmed down version of laravel/jetstream. This was laravel/breeze. I would call it laravel/ui but on steroids. It was fantastic, but it’s primary styling package was also TailwindCSS. Having decided this was the best of a bad situation, I spent some time converting the original laravel/breeze
Laravel 9.x & Frontends
With the release of Laravel 9 in 2022, more frontend frameworks were being released, with the Laravel Team supporting them out of the box. Therefore I took it upon myself to understand which frontend frameworks are currently working well with Laravel 9.x and begin analyzing them. The frameworks I see from the Laravel Documentation are;
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
Whilst my primary focus has always been Backend Development, blade syntax always had a special place in my heart for how simply it handled backend data on the frontend. Recently, FOMO hit me hard and I had a stark realization I need to break out of my comfort zone. Whislt normally, I would be thriving for the opportunity to do so, my daily job has been relentless with projects coming at me back to back. I couldn’t feel the end of projects nearing, which was another reason for the FOMO feelings. My motto has always been Never Stop Learning. I always thrive on new opportunities and learning/improving my skills.
Moving Forward
Eventually, I managed to get a break from some projects and therefore decided to try and dedicate one or two hours an evening scrubbing up on skills and pushing my comfort zone a little. With the above list, I have decided to start with VueJS. I started a course on Laracasts understanding the basics.
Excitingly, reaching lesson 10 of a current 31, I’m feeling more excited to carry on. Most of my work with Laravel is already broken down into reusable blade components. With this only being the start of the Vue course, I still have not reached how Vue interacts with Laravel, but there is another course for that, also on Laracasts, which will be my follow up.
I would also like to take time to understand React a little more. I was given brief exposure to this in another project but without full working knowledge, I can’t say I know it well enough to make an informed decision about which route I am going to take on my next project.
Parting Words
If you have reached this far, thank you for taking some time out of your day to read this article. There are many reasons developers get comfortable with where they are at. Whilst I’m mostly a backend dev, I have recently felt the urge to focus some time on new(er) Frontend frameworks to be more informed on the best way to approach different projects in the future.
Learning never stops, coding is a love, a passion and the problem solving of bugs is one of the best adrenaline rushes I get.
Finally, don’t let FOMO be a blocker for pushing forward. It is definitely hard to overcome, but feels great when you recognize it and push your boundaries! Good Luck!
Thanks for reading!