Ask HN: Why isn't Laravel used in more enterprise apps?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40534015

by bazil376 • 2 years ago

10 14 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

At least from my experience looking for jobs in the US, I rarely see Laravel come up in an enterprise tech stack. Why is this?

gregjor• 2 years ago

Enterprise-scale companies tend to use Java or C#/.Net, for a variety of reasons: familiarity, enterprise-scale tooling, easier to outsource, integration with other enterprise tools from Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, etc. Big companies tend to use tools they have already invested in, and have staff trained to use. Laravel/PHP, or anything different from the languages and tools already in use are perceived as low-end and requiring parallel infrastructure and staff. Some large companies shy away from open source for core business products, preferring support contracts and stable, controlled release schedules.

The only time I see PHP at a large company is marketing groups setting up WordPress sites, on managed hosting, and they aren't writing PHP.

You will find plenty of Laravel/PHP and similar tooling in small and medium-sized businesses.

meiraleal• 2 years ago

Because of the well known low quality of PHP developers.

saluki3• 2 years ago

You must hang in the WordPress community.

hiAndrewQuinn• 2 years ago

It's a startup weapon, not an enterprise weapon. It's mostly an accident of history, Laravel itself is great.

jonathan-re• 2 years ago

At least in Europe the enterprise market is hard to get in as a new player and the established companies have their expertise in Java/.Net… and would never come up with a sentence like „That looks like a great project to try Laravel on“

throwaway38405• 2 years ago

Adding to this: I am very often surprised how little most developers of other stacks know and understand about the Java tooling: The IDEs, Frameworks, build tools and the JVM itself are by now so much ahead compared to everything else on the market (PHP, Node.js, Python, Golang, Ruby)... Add to this the stability of the Java platform, it is most of the time a no brainer to use it.

saluki3• 2 years ago

I only know one dev team using Java and they are on a Federal project.

Every tool/framework has it's place and Java is the best choice for that particular team and lots of enterprises.

You should check out the Laravel ecosystem you'd be very surprised how nice it it is to develop with and all the tools and packages that are polished and ready for production.

Laravel Framework Forge (Server Builds/Management) Envoyer (Zero Downtime Deploys) Vapor (Serverless) A Package for almost everything Auth, 2FA out of the box Reverb (websockets) Scout (full text search) Cashier(subs + payments) Dusk (automated browser testing) Herd (Local dev in a box) Horizon (Redis monitoring) Pennant (feature flags) Pint (code style fixer) Pulse (monitoring/performance dashboard) Prompts(beautiful command line apps) Sanctum (API & mobile app auth) Socialite(social auth) Telescope(debug tool) Spark (SaaS in a box) Ray (Debug tool) Debugbar (Debug tool)

I built a funded startup on Laravel we had two developers and one was the CTO so he had limited dev time. We chose the TALL stack (Tailwind UI, Alpine js, Laravel and Livewire). There is no way we could have built it it out fast enough using Java or .net. We passed extensive security audits as it was a platform used by stategovernments, were SOC-2 compliant and built to scale to 500k+ users per state.

A Laravel developer is easily 10x more productive building an MVP and launching it to production than any other framework.

Everything you need in Laravel is fast, easy and pro.

I'm currently leading a team building SPA with react, it's easily 10x more complex and feels even less responsive than the TALL Stack application.

Sure enterprise is more comfortable with java, .net and react but it's always been that way. How many enterprises were building on Rails?

Every tool/framework as a purpose, move outside your comfort zone you might be surprised what's out there.

VoodooJuJu• 2 years ago

Yeah but Java is cringe. I have to install Java apps as part of my job. It's cringe and bluepilled af.

quintes• 2 years ago

The Microsoft stack used in enterprise means many shops will be .net and that ties in nicely to other parts of the ms stack including db

I’ve not seen Java for a bit but it is around for large stacks because that’s what those vendors would use or for strongly typed use cases

I think python is also more prevalent for all the reasons including data science so seeing a php stack be less common.

Source: I’m talking years of government and private sector work in South Africa and New Zealand

toldyouso2022• 2 years ago

You got the standards replies and maybe they are true.

Me, I rationally agree with those replies but my insticts tell me that it is because in an enterprise setting managers don't want what works best, they want what can cover their ass best.

Java and .net do that.

If you as a manager use laravel and save the company tens of thousands, nobody gives a crap. If you use laravel and things go wrong, even if things would have gone even worse with java and .net they are gonna set your butt on fire and throw you out of a window.

Laravel is for entrepreneurs, java and .net for managers.

Just my opinion of course

bruce511• 2 years ago

I agree. Context matters and what can be hard for small devs and startups to understand is that enterprise has different goals, resources and constraints.

You'll see people promoting Laravel as faster and cheaper than say C#. For places that value faster and cheaper that's good.

Enterprise isn't cash constrained. Cheaper is not a goal. (Saving "thousands " isn't helpful when the bottom lines are in millions or billions.)

Enterprise isn't time constrained. (Sure they always make like it is, but in reality if this thing doesn't ship tomorrow it's no biggie.

Enterprise is all about risk management. You don't get fired for "buying IBM". Enterprise wants a steady pool of developers. They want to call the local (or more likely foreign) body shop and add 10 people.

brtkdotse• 2 years ago

You'll see people promoting Laravel as faster and cheaper than say C#

Faster in what way? Cheaper in what way?

revskill• 2 years ago

Because it is hard to install php without LAMP.

saluki3• 2 years ago

You really need to check out Herd (Local) and Forge/Vapor (AWS) you'll never say hard to install again.

With Laravel I can go from 0 to new web app in production in 15 Minutes

I can register a new domain, point name servers to CloudFlare.

Setup my local env with Herd from scratch, build a server with Forge, point A record to server IP. Setup SSL cert with Forge/Let's Encrypt.

Start a new laravel project, use jetstream to setup an app with users, auth, 2FA and a dashboard. Create a new GitHub Repo, deploy my code to the new server through Forge.

Create a new user through the UI, Login with 2FA, view Dashboard.

Give me 30 minutes and I can setup a Load Balancer, multiple app and worker servers.

Ask HN: Why isn't Laravel used in more enterprise apps?

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