It’s looking more and more like I’ll be using Laravel in preference to Rails, Django, and Masonite. Maybe Laravel isn’t ‘better’ from every point of view, but it seems ‘better’ enough for me.
Yes, the syntax for Ruby and Python is simpler and cleaner than PHP. And, yes, Rails just ‘knows’ things that the other frameworks don’t. For me, I think the more explicit coding requirements of Laravel make it easier for me to follow the code when I come back to it after a break. I’ll have to take the more cluttered style of PHP for that ease. Plus, there’s the fact that PHP applications are easier to deploy than Ruby and Python (deploying Django seems just evil).
I’ve mentioned before that I can find solutions to the problems I get myself into faster with Laravel. More developers code in PHP which means there are many online resources for help. Rails is very popular, too, but the knowledge required is more esoteric and I get tangled up more often.
Working with Ruby on Rails is more ‘fun’ than Laravel, but I don’t know that it’s better for me.