Taylor Otwell: What 14 Years of Laravel Taught Me About Maintainability
15 days ago
- #PHP
- #Laravel
- #Software Development
- Taylor Otwell reflects on 14 years of building Laravel, from PHP 5.3 origins to a full-time business with a 70-person team.
- Simplicity, understandability, and confidence in making changes are key to maintainable software according to Taylor.
- Taylor discusses the importance of sticking to framework conventions for better long-term outcomes.
- Laravel was designed for the 'average developer,' balancing Taylor's preferences with community needs.
- Taylor remains the sole curator of Laravel's open-source core despite its growth.
- Laravel's first commercial product emerged from a personal need, pushing Taylor to go full-time.
- Taylor now avoids breaking backward compatibility in Laravel's evolution.
- Laravel apps that follow conventions age better than those that over-engineer.
- Taylor emphasizes making decisions by comparing real code side-by-side.
- Most Laravel developers prefer facades over dependency injection.
- Laravel has evolved to embrace PHP's maturing type system while staying dynamic.
- Adam Wathan's course reshaped Laravel's testing culture towards feature testing.
- Taylor's new challenge is transitioning from solving his own problems to empowering a larger team.