Honestly laravel is one of the best dev experiences. Having used Django, fastapi, and built a custom server with golang, its still my go to for off the shelf fullstack crud apps.

Kotlin is for Android apps. Scala is a Java replacement. Those frameworks are unrelated.

Are you talking about building an Android app?

I've built app in different Javascript frameworks. Angular, Vue, React.

If I was building a website I would use PHP over Python, Golang or Javascript frameworks because what you get out of the box doesn't compare.

Each language does something well. If I was building AI python would be my first choice.

> Kotlin is for Android apps

Welp, guess all my Spring Boot web apps in Kotlin have actually been Android apps in disguise all this time..

Indeed. A lot of the criticism is from people who never used the language (which seems to be true for any language/framework). This is why I'm very cautious when making assumptions about PHP's suitability - I haven't used it in the longest time and, when I did, I used it the same way one would use ASP or JSP - as a template engine that can do some logic before or after rendering a page.

> Kotlin is for Android apps.

I have used Kotlin for web services and, while I prefer Scala or plain Java for that, some of my colleagues prefer the Kotlin syntax and features.

> what you get out of the box doesn't compare.

Would you like to elaborate here? I have used Rails and Django and they get you a lot out of the box.

If it is what you/your team are most confident in and it is suitable to solve the problem (i.e a typical MVC web application), then yes, it is a very sensible choice. If your confidence lies elsewhere, then no, choose that instead. End of the day you’re just solving a problem using code.

True, but that’s self reinforcing. The more you use a hammer, the more confident you become in everything being nails.

And that’s when you become a master of your tools and can wield immense power with them! But in all seriousness, PHP is a good language, and coupled with a modern framework like Laravel, it’s great to use.

I’ve used it since 2002, and have recently got back into it properly after a decade in architecture roles, and it feels very welcoming and love using it. And I _have_ tried the whole JavaScript thing, but simply find it’s ever changing build tools, package managers, etc a pain. Just my opinion though.

> And that’s when you become a master of your tools and can wield immense power with them!

That still doesn't change the fact that, when you master hammers, you still have no idea of how to correctly use a screw.

Every language comes with some blind spots. Learning different languages is often enlightening because it forces one to see the solution space with a different kind of glasses.

I am working with Kotlin for the last 2 years and have js / typescript / php experience. PHP is still a great choice to start new projects in for many web applications.

I started out with PHP, if I'm building an actual app though, Ruby on Rails is still my go to.

PHP is still used today because it needed good docs. Who's laughing now?