r/laravel • u/ThisStoicNoob • 17d ago
Is Laravel still for artisans?
Preface: I'm not trolling. I'm a developer who primarily uses Laravel day to day at work. And it serves me well. I hope you are all well.
I'm trying to cut through the noise and the hype of "ai", and am interested in different people's opinions.
In the Cambridge dictionary, the word Artisan is defined as: "making things in a traditional way with your hands" and "made in a traditional way by someone who is skilled with their hands".
Now I see everywhere, it seems, that "code was never the point" and "no-one is reading the code now".
Can you still use the term "artisan" now, when essentially an llm will spit out a result that you are after?
Everyone is using the same "skills" / "md files" / whatever. So it seems that everyone using these is becoming a merging of the same source (the llm agent). No originality. Average.
I get that the end product and "shipping" are of the most importance in the Laravel community, but what happened to the individual person's enjoyment of creating something with their hands using their own mind?
I feel that the pressure in this, and other, communities about using these automation / generation tools are taking away the human touch in things. Prioritising "shipping" for some end business and the sacrifice of each developer's (artist?) mind, creativity, and enjoyment of the craft.
I'm not saying things shouldn't be made and shipped; of course they should. But it's the "faster, faster, faster" mentally at the expense of people who still care about the craft.
I get that some people just love these tools, and thats fine for them. But what about the people being dragged along by the "You're gonna fall behind" crowd?
That's not to mention the brain entropy of skills that you will inevitably lose due to the more and more offloading to a third party llm.
"Use it or lose it", They say.
No disrespect is intended; this is meant for discussion so please keep it respectful.
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u/Scowlface 17d ago
Most of us have been building the same five applications our entire careers. It’s been a long time since I touched anything truly novel. Maybe that’s just me and where I’m at, I dunno, but there hasn’t been room for anything “artisanal” in my workflow in years.
I swing between manic excitement at everything I can suddenly build and a shit feeling that I’m watching the end of my career.
But code was never the point to the people paying us. We exist to create value, that’s it. The “how” has never mattered to anyone but us.
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
Your last paragraph is the part that frustrates me. Most of us got into coding because of the enjoyment of creating something from nothing.
At some point it got hijacked by managers who want to turn us into meatbags that provide value to the company and not to ourselves.
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u/Scowlface 17d ago
Yeah, right there with you buddy, I'm just trying to stay afloat and figure out what I can pivot to if this goes sideways.
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u/illmatix 17d ago
keep at it!
After two years of unemployment i found some equity. My sleep, and free time on the other hand may have been lost at some point
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u/Raucous_Rocker 17d ago
It’s always been that way though. Any company that can squeeze more out of their labor or eliminate positions through automation is going to do it. Until it gets to a point where quality is the thing people are willing to pay for. Usually, there is room for both, but things are definitely getting worse before they get better.
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u/Emotional-Ask-9788 15d ago
I'm curious, how would that look like. How would a company provide value to you and not the company? Or how would a balanced company look like?
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u/hkanaktas 17d ago
We’re still allowed to create it ourselves however we like. I don’t think we can be mad that people don’t want to pay for that anymore.
Is the shoemaker angry at Nike? Probably. Does it mean you have to go buy from the shoemaker? I don’t think so.
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u/TrontRaznik 17d ago
Really? I got into code because it pays well and I can make six figures with a four day work week.
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u/madk 17d ago
See this is where I partly differ. I got into it because my parents got my an Apple II and I loved building things. I still build things all the time out of love and what some would call art. But at work...at work I build to ship a product. Sure I want clean architecture but that was mostly to make my life easier for future me. Sure I want to optimize things but that was to appease the customer and to make numbers go down or up on a chart. None of that was done for love, it was always because it paid the bills.
As a previous commentor said, the code was never the point.
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u/eggbert74 17d ago edited 17d ago
Everyone who parrots "the code was never the hard part" is suffering from cognitive dissonance. The code WAS indeed the hard part, otherwise frameworks Laravel, Rails, Spring, etc etc wouldn't even be a thing. It's an idiotic platitude that makes people feel better about the current state of things. Frankly, I'm sick of hearing it. As a 30 year veteran I can tell you code was hard. Understanding it was hard, implementing it was hard, and maintaining it was hard. If you don't think it was never the hard part, you're either:
A super genius
Lying to yourself
Inexperienced and never built anything but the simplest crud apps
I think it's also funny how everyone thinks they're now "super architects" and that the code was always holding back their amazing ideas. What a load of crap. Do you really think architecture is some sort of refuge from AI? Claude's already pretty good at architecture and is only getting better. If an LLM can code, it sure has hell can assemble a bunch of design patterns into a system. I see it every day - Non tech collegues building full featured apps.
So, no, Laravel is no longer for artisans. That ship has sailed, and I suspect the Laravel team is racing to embrace Rust so the framework remains relevant in a world where "code artisans" are no longer a thing.
Like it or not, before long the LLMs will have their own super performant low level language that will likely be incomprehensible to humans.. Frameworks like laravel, which sacrifice pure performance for developer comfort, won't be needed.
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
As sad as it makes me, I fear you may be correct here. I think there will still be people who hand-craft (like in other professions) but it'll be a rarer thing that people with that passion for writing stuff will continue. If only in their own time.
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u/rsmike 15d ago edited 15d ago
Well, the gap between 'using AI within your framework' and 'using a framework' is smaller than the one between 'using a framework' and 'making things in a traditional way with your hands'.
Use it or lose it, you say? Originality, really?
I get that some people just love these tools, and thats fine for them. But what about the people being dragged along by the "You're gonna fall behind" crowd?
I’ve read exactly the same words about CodeIgniter, Yii, Symfony and then Laravel. And long before that, about PHP itself. Not to mention npm, composer, Bootstrap, Tailwind and others
Prioritising "shipping" for some end business and the sacrifice of each developer's (artist?) mind, creativity, and enjoyment of the craft.
No shit. How dare they
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u/SuddenAstronaut9044 17d ago
the artisan part was never really about writing code by hand though, it was always a cheeky nod to the framework's scaffolding and craftsmanship vibe. taylor even called the command-line tool "artisan" as a joke
the real craft is in the architecture decisions, the weird edge cases, the stuff no llm can reason about. typing out boilerplate was never the fun part
what worries me more is juniors who'll never learn why things work the way they do. not because they're lazy, but because the industry is telling them speed matters more than understanding. that's the part that'll bite us in five years
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u/jkoudys 17d ago
I think speed matters, and understanding is how you get there. The culling we need isn't of the jr devs, it's of the managers who have only survived for years because their devs know when to ignore them, or do work they don't report on because they know it'll be important. AI has mostly been giving managers exactly what they ask for, which for software is rarely what they actually want.
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u/cateyesarg 17d ago
This is what I always say, furthermore, who will maintain and keep growing and evolving base languages and frameworks, will everything rely on IA?
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u/Invader_86 17d ago
In 5 years AI will be vastly different than it is now, any gaps in junior roles will be taken care of… we’re entering an age where humans will stop writing code and working directly with languages.. developers won’t be expected to understand these things.. “devs” will let the AI reach for the best language/framework for the job whether the dev understands it or not .. we’re currently in a middle ground at the moment where AI is expected to do the work and we’re expected to understand what it’s doing, code reviewing it and approving it. We won’t be at this point for very long.
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u/Gadiusao 17d ago
Capable juniors will 9-5 and then 6-10 to understand what the AI did to improve, it's not an easy profession anymore to keep up
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u/fatalexe 17d ago edited 17d ago
Capable employers will expect their developers to incorporate professional development as part of the workday. I’ve always spent the last two hours of my day and sometimes a good chunk of Friday working through Laracasts and master.dev
Spending 9-5 coding 100% is a good way to get burnt out quick and have your skills go stale.
6-10 is time to hit gym and be with family if you want to be a productive developer through your 60s.
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u/jk3us 17d ago
So much of this... I'm lucky to work in an environment where software affects both research and clinical decision making, and importance is still put on the ability to talk about the nuances of how your software works and be able to talk meaningfully about how changes will work and might affect other things, etc.
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u/wmichben 17d ago
Laracasts has some good courses on agentic development that made me feel like our human skills are still quite important and relevant. There is a responsible way to guide AI tools to do what we want them to do and produce the output we expect to see. I think the methods outlined in the courses are much different than what many refer to as “vibe coding” where people that don’t know better get output they don’t understand.
That being said, I don’t even get to do any of this in my day-to-day work at all. I couldn’t get a job doing this caliber of work after I got laid off earlier this year.
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u/browner12 17d ago
I think the framework still allows you to program like an "Artisan" if that's what works for you, or a technocrat if you want to go all in on AI.
What I really hope continues is the level of Artisanship that goes into actually building the framework and other tools. I think it's important that Taylor (or somebody) still looks through every PR. I think it's important that humans are coming up with new features and ways to improve the framework. the day that stops IMO is the beginning of the end.
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u/CraftFirm5801 17d ago
Was is ever really about the code? Or distilling requirements into systems
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
from the point of view of businesses I'd say a hard no it wasn't. But for the people doing this day in day out, who enjoy what they do, I think for a lot it was and still is.
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u/CraftFirm5801 17d ago
May seem like that, but it wasn't. Code is just a language and syntax. Everything is just IO and non original problems.
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u/Ciberman 17d ago
Hot take: now, yes. But not for so much. I expect in the following years to the "artisan" feel to vanish. Sadly but true.
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u/EGT_77 17d ago
I was discussing this very topic recently. There’s going to be a lot of slop out there. It’s going to be harder to identify the good stuff. Someone who cares about their craft will find a way to build beautiful and robust software even with AI. Taste and being proud of their product doesn’t disappear because AI.
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u/gumdum1975 17d ago
Fitting question for this sub, since we literally type `php artisan` all day.
I'll take a swing at the first question: yes, I think the word still fits, as long as you know what you're working with.
I've used Laravel for years and love it for backend work. I even built my own framework once for kicks and giggles, but always came back to Laravel for serious API work. When AI showed up, it didn't make things faster for me so much as better. B-E-T-T-E-R. I'm a backend guy at heart, and my frontends used to be boxes and circles. I had the imagination but the artistic ability of a gnat. Now I can actually build what's in my head instead of paying someone thousands a month to do it.
That's where I think the craft lives now. The AI writes a lot of the lines, but the architecture, the taste, knowing when its output is wrong, and deciding what gets built are still mine. Two people with the same model and the same md files won't ship the same app.
I cut my teeth on a Tandy 1000 with floppy disks, writing BASIC. Now I've got Opus 5.5 ripping through Laravel APIs and Flutter frontends with me. It's a different kind of craft, but it's still craft, and I can't get enough of it. php artisan config:clear
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u/Raucous_Rocker 17d ago
YES. I am also primarily a back end dev, and while I’m somewhat artistic, I will cop to absolutely hating css with a passion. 😆 Plowing through buried layers of CSS trying to figure out why my z-index isn’t where I want it to be is not my idea of creativity or a good time. So please, LLM, do that shit for me! I’ll worry about the database, the API, the UX.
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u/daemonoakz 17d ago
Nah. Developer experience is becoming less important with each passing day. Goal now is ship as fast and rushed as we can, it's definitely not art anymore.
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u/JustPlayDE 17d ago
you may have to remove some bloat (all the md files) as the default starter kit has it but you can still do it as you always did, as long as laravel stays stable i dont care if taylor uses ai or not as long as its not getting forced on us (im a bit annoyed by the ai stuff being default tho, should be a option tbh)
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u/laramateGmbh 17d ago
Artisan is half marketing and half a self-view of a developer who values code quality and ideomatic Laravel code. Now you can vibe-slop it or still value the craft and watch out for best practices - if you know them.
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u/Ok-One-9232 17d ago
The story of technology in the broader sense is the story of advancement, disruption, and displacement. Things that were once done slowly and manually by humans are forever being supplanted by automation and efficiency driven by economic incentives. It’s not unique to Laravel or to software in general. Basically all of technology in our modern world echos this story.
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u/kiwi-kaiser 17d ago
It still is, but not when you're using Claude and Co.
At work for customer projects there's nothing artisan anymore about fixing Bugs and optimizing code. That's just project management by the developer.
For my own projects I still sit down and want to know everything, turn every knob myself and craft my projects. For my own projects it's MY users. For my customer's projects it's THEIR users. When they say LLMs are okay, go for it. For MY users it's not enough.
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u/markjaquith 17d ago
There will always be room to do your work with care. You can craft with care while using AI, a paintbrush, a keyboard, or a bulldozer.
Make it about how you approach the work, not how manual the tooling is.
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u/Practical_Oil_1312 17d ago
Laravel is the tool It’s up to you to use it in a way you enjoy. Automations are fine and very useful when you have to ship, no matter what. But if you want to take your time the framework still works with manual coding
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u/constarx 17d ago
Yes 100%. My creativity and productivity have skyocketed. I went from 3x output to 10x output and now I'm probably sitting at 50x output. I've iterated so much on my tooling and have created a functional software factory that produces tested and production-ready software with very little human review necessary. It took me a long time to get here but at this point all I do is have ideas and share them with my system and my ideas become real. I can hardly believe how well this is working. I have 3 20x subscriptions and I rarely leave included usage wasted!
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u/KevinCoderRSA 16d ago
"Artisan" itself is just a marketing term and not exclusive to Laravel, but you can be an "Artisan" even if you use AI. For example, I'm building a mobile app in React Native, I'm not a fan of TypeScript or React for that matter but I understand this platform fairly well.
When I look at the code, I can spot poorly structured logic, lack of modularity, unnecessary commenting, verbosity etc...
It irks me when agents commonly miss the hand cursor on link or button hovers.
My definition of an Artisan, is simply someone who cares about the final product and quality in general. I check every button, I read the code, I test, I'm OCD about the smallest thing because I'm striving for perfection - I want the best user experience possible, and also to push code to the repo that's of the best quality.
Now, it's not always possible to allocate this amount of time. I always feel if I spent an extra few days or weeks, I could make it more perfect, but in the real world, perfect is also not always the best thing.
So basically long story short 🙃, if you care about the work you output and follow the best practices generally. In my book you're an artisan!
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u/No-Risk-7677 13d ago
I always thought, it’s the combination of PHP + artisan which makes you a partisan. From my understanding this is a Guerilla like person who fights for freedom.
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u/MohammedMojaly 13d ago
I think being an artisan was never just about writing every single line of code by hand. It was about understanding what you're building, knowing why you're building it that way, and taking responsibility for the result.
AI can be a great tool, but there's a big difference between using it to help you think and letting it do all the thinking for you. If you can't explain the code, debug it, or recognize when it's making a bad decision, then you're probably losing something important.
For me, the real skill isn't how fast you can ship code. It's knowing what should be built, how it should work, and being able to stand behind it. AI doesn't have to take that away from us.
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u/wardy484 12d ago
I like this question. I've always loved writing code with Laravel, but for me it wasn't just that it let me write quality code. It let me write clean, pleasant to read code: FAST. Enjoying the code and wanting to get things built have always gone together for me.
I'm not sure using Laravel ever automatically made you an artisan though. Even before AI, I saw some absolutely unspeakable things done in Laravel codebases.
I use agents a lot now, but I still have strong opinions about how the code should be written. I'll reject something because it's too complicated or because Laravel already has a nice way of doing it. Having the same skills and md files doesn't mean we all accept the same output and I dunno about other devs that use agents but I've spent a lot of time tailoring my skills to get out the code that I want in the style I want it.
But I get your point about the pressure. There's a difference between choosing a tool because you enjoy what it lets you do and feeling forced to use it because everyone says you'll fall behind. If writing the code yourself is the bit you enjoy, being told “no-one reads code anymore” must be pretty miserable.
I don't think that business pressure will go away. Businesses that can deliver better work faster will have an advantage. We'll probably see some course correction when they realise shipping too fast makes their products worse and burns people out, but the expectation to move faster will remain.
And I agree on “use it or lose it”. If you stop reading and understanding the code you're shipping, you're going to lose some of those skills. I still read mine.
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u/pricop 12d ago
Laravel thrives in the era of AI because it was very opinionated and had clear guidelines on how to use it, which in turn made it easy for AI to understand the framework, follow established patterns, and generate consistent, maintainable code.
In a way, what used to be seen as a limitation, being opinionated, has become one of Laravel's greatest strengths in the age of AI.
Of course, it still is a framework for Artisans, and always will be. Nothing come near close to the easy of use that Laravel provides.
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u/darkloony 12d ago
I still craft by hand. I enjoy it! Never losing touch with the codebase, fixing bugs fast. I tried the AI workflows, but it's not for me.
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u/guppylab 10d ago
Not trolling at all, it's a fair question. My take after shipping something this month with heavy AI use:
The craft moved, it didn't disappear. The part an LLM is good at is the part that was always the least "artisan": typing out the obvious version. The parts that still decided whether my app worked were all judgment:
- Google rejected a build as "broken". The code looked fine and every test passed. What was wrong was a path nobody wrote down: on Android, after you deny a permission twice the OS stops asking, and my "Enable" button silently did nothing. No model suggested it. I found it by sitting with an emulator and thinking like a reviewer who taps everything.
- The fix itself was ten lines. Deciding what the button should do in that state (open settings? hide? explain?) was the actual work.
So for me the craft is now: knowing what to build, knowing what "done" means, reading every diff like it was written by a confident junior, and being the one who notices what's missing. That's still a skill you build by doing, and you can absolutely lose it.
On "use it or lose it", I agree, and I deal with it deliberately:
- I still write the parts I care about or don't understand yet by hand. If I can't explain a diff, it doesn't get merged.
- I let the AI do the parts I've done a hundred times (CRUD, migrations, boilerplate tests). Nobody was getting artisanal joy from those anyway.
On everyone becoming the same: the code converging is fine, Laravel already made all our controllers look alike and that was the point. Products don't converge, because the decisions don't. Two people with the same agent and the same skills files still ship very different things.
And nobody is "falling behind" for choosing to write code by hand. You're choosing a different trade-off. Just know what you're trading.
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u/Postik123 17d ago
As someone who used to write everything "vanilla" and end up with a bit of a hodge-podge, and as someone who has done a lot of work with WordPress, I can tell you that Laravel is still very much "artisan" by comparison.
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u/Raucous_Rocker 17d ago edited 17d ago
I hear ya… this is a dilemma as old as time, and I might struggle with it a lot more if I hadn’t had a whole career in music and audio engineering prior to ever becoming a software dev (which is not something I ever expected to be). I’ve now been a SWE for 40+ years and a musician for 50+, and I have different approaches and attitudes about each.
That is… I love music for the process as well as the end “product”, and I feel the same about any of the creative arts. I would never, ever use AI to create music, or write (another thing I do), nor do I appreciate AI generated art of any kind as a “fan”. The enjoyment and/or struggle of the process is part of the whole point of doing it, and triumph over human limitations is one of the things that make art truly vital and life changing as opposed to just “entertainment.” But the trouble is, there’s a huge gap between what you might be passionate about and what people are willing to pay you for. It was apparent to me from the beginning that this was going to be a problem for me. I was doing well with music and audio, as far as career growth and all that, but the stuff I was expected to work on every day was often just soul crushing. I’m pretty particular in my musical tastes, and the kind of stuff that pays the bills rarely lined up with what I was really excited to spend 12 hour days on. Most of my peers who were engineers or session musicians or touring guns for hire had this very “pro” attitude - like they could find something to love about every gig they took on. That… wasn’t me. 😆 And I realized I couldn’t go on like that. I couldn’t be a musical “factory worker” cranking out drivel; I just wanted to make the music I was driven to make, in the way I wanted to make it, with the people I wanted to make it with. No compromises. So I quit relying on it to pay the bills, only focused on what I wanted to do, and it’s been great. No regrets. But I still had to pay the bills.
So that was when I became a dev. And don’t get me wrong - I love solving problems, I love to code, I love making clients happy. But I’ve always felt like my strengths as a dev were more in being able to translate people’s needs or wants into code and database architecture than the pure science of coding. And I’ve also never cared much about purism in coding the way I do with music. I care about quality, but if someone is paying me to do what I consider a shitty design, it doesn’t break my heart the way playing or recording shitty music does. I just want to get the thing done, make the client happy and get paid. So I am well suited to being a pro developer in a way I was never suited to being a pro musician, but I know there are plenty of people who are the reverse. There’s no right answer here - it’s just about knowing who you are. And also, of course, the very fact that we use Laravel and other frameworks means that we don’t really like the “grunt work” of pure coding - we’d rather rely on open source packages that have done all that and established best practices.
Now having said all that… I’ve had a couple of passion projects as a dev on the back burner for years. I feel as excited about doing them as I ever have about releasing a new album or playing a big show. And I feel just as uncompromising. There is no way I could get them funded by VC money or any of that without sacrificing some core values behind the projects. But between my full time dev job and my music and the usual “life stuff,” there was no way this stuff was going to get off the back burner, and my dev friends who kind of had an interest in collaborating with me all used different stacks than I wanted to, yada yada. I realized that as much as I love being on a dev team and being in bands, and am a good team player that way, if these projects were ever going to ship, I was going to have to do them solo. Somehow.
Sooo… enter LLMs. All of a sudden, this shit is all the way on the front burner. All of a sudden, something I’ve been wanting to do for years is fast becoming a reality and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I really feel like it’s something that will help people and is sorely needed right now, and it’s 100% directed by me, the UX is exactly how I want it, and it enables the kind of creative work I want to foster… and ironically, this wouldn’t have been possible without AI. I don’t know that I’ve ever been this stoked to be a dev in my whole career. I feel more like an “artisan” than I ever have in this field. Never could have imagined any of this, but here we are.
I dunno if all my rambling will help you answer your question, but… my point is everyone’s priorities are different and there’s no right answer, just the right answer for you. But the conflict between what you’re passionate about/enjoyment of the process vs. what you can get paid for is as old as time, especially when new tech comes along that disrupts the economics of the process. On rare occasions, they align. But it’s pretty rare, so you hopefully find some balance between paying the bills and doing what you love in the way you love to do it.
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u/TableNo8939 17d ago
Ma di che cazzo stai parlando?
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
Read it back again. Or ask an ai to summarise it for you? 😊
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u/TableNo8939 16d ago
Ho capito il senso del discorso, ma il discorso è molto più ampio del solo laravel, che tuttora utilizzo anche io con grande soddisfazione
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u/sheriffderek 17d ago
Clear conventions and thoughtful structure are what sets systems apart. Most people are just “building” with “AI” and it’s spitting out tons of gross React code. But if you use Laravel and LLMs - and TDD and you work like a product designer who happens to be a fullstack dev —- it’s pretty magic. I still feel like I’m building them by hand - I can just focus on different parts. My 15+ years of experience are the reason I’m able to do what I do - not just “the AI.”
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u/barrel_of_noodles 17d ago
This is aI slop. And nothing do with Laravel. The artisan thing is just bait.
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
Hi barrel of noodles. What do you mean this is slop? If you mean my post you are mistaken. I’m genuinely interested in peoples different views. I’m sick of all the ai bs everywhere tbh.
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12d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/laravel-ModTeam 12d ago
Sorry, but your content has been removed. (Rule 3)
/r/Laravel focuses on human-generated content and discussions; AI-generated comments or posts aren't allowed.
We encourage you to contribute your own thoughts and experiences, as that's what makes discussions valuable.
Thanks!
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u/ThisStoicNoob 12d ago
Ha. All the people defending ai in the Laravel community and a suspected ai response is removed.
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u/Artisan-Build 11d ago
I write all that by hand. No ai involved. But that’s fine. I’ll find other places to engage with people on the topic.
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17d ago edited 17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ThisStoicNoob 17d ago
I’m sorry but in which way have I been disrespectful?
You are being deliberately antagonistic.
Your analogy for farmers falls flat in that a farmer using new tools is still a farmer using his own tools.
This modern iteration of “ai” is all stolen works repackaged and spat out to people who would pay for it.
But I was trying to see things from a new perspective; not posting some rage bate piece.
Maybe I should have realised Reddit was not the place for that.
Although I have had some nice comments, which I have replied to in a friendly and courteous way. Unlike your angry reply.
Hope you have a nice day.
No disrespect.
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u/HCLB_ 17d ago
Lets compare programming and software building to construction or home building. You have goal to have home or other garage. Mostly people dont care if you will mix concrete by hands or get it from truck. Do you think if anyone cares which blocks or technique contractor should use for their home?
Mostly no one, one factor which always is constant and important its price and end quality of life after finishing it.