As of October 25, 2025, the Laravel and PHP community finds itself at a crossroads. A recent thread on X, initiated by Laravel courses creator and YouTuber Povilas Korop (@PovilasKorop) on October 23, 2025, has ignited a passionate discussion about the declining interest in Laravel among new and young developers. With input from prominent community members, industry insights, and emerging trends like AI-driven "vibe coding," this article explores the challenges facing Laravel and PHP, the proposed solutions, and what the future might hold for this once-dominant web development ecosystem.
The Problem: A Declining Appeal
Povilas Korop’s original post raises a critical concern: the Laravel and PHP community is seeing fewer young developers entering the fold. This observation is echoed by key figures like Taylor Otwell (Laravel’s creator), Jeffrey Way, and Nuno Maduro, who have discussed this trend on podcasts over the past year. The thread reveals several underlying issues:
Salary Disparity: Aaron Francis (@aarondfrancis) points out a stark financial incentive gap, noting that JavaScript developers can command salaries up to $250,000 later in their careers, while PHP struggles to match this ceiling. Web data from Hackr.io (2025) supports this, showing JavaScript developers averaging $96,533 in the US compared to PHP’s $91,215, with 104,000+ job openings versus 12,000+ for PHP.
Paid Ecosystem vs. Free Alternatives: Simon Hull (@SimonTHull) highlights the challenge of paid tools like Herd and Laracasts, which, while not official Laravel products, may deter newcomers accustomed to JavaScript’s largely free ecosystem. Povilas defends this model, arguing that creators deserve compensation, but the debate underscores accessibility as a barrier.
Job Market Stagnation: Tom Planer (@tplaner) and Simon Hamp (@simonhamp) emphasize a lack of well-paying Laravel/PHP jobs compared to languages like Node, Python, Go, and Java. Planer suggests startups must adopt Laravel to create opportunities, while Hamp notes JavaScript has "eaten their lunch" due to broader adoption.
AI and "Vibe Coding": Ross Ewing (@ross__ewing) and the IEEE’s 2025 report (Neowin, 09/24/25) point to a broader trend: AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are reducing reliance on traditional learning forums, with JavaScript dropping from third to sixth in popularity rankings. This "vibe coding" phenomenon may disproportionately affect niche languages like PHP.
The Bright Spots: Community Resilience and Data
Despite these challenges, there’s evidence of Laravel’s enduring strength. The 2024 StackOverflow Developer Survey, cited by Glorywebs.com (09/19/25), ranks Laravel as the leading PHP framework, with over 50% of PHP developers preferring it. Its adoption spans e-commerce and healthcare, showcasing its versatility. A Codeburst report also notes a 30% reduction in bugs and 72% performance improvement for companies rewiring systems with Laravel, underscoring its technical merits.
Proposed Solutions: A Call to Action
The X thread is a brainstorming goldmine, with community members offering actionable ideas:
Market Research: Povilas suggests studying salary and entry-level opportunities to counter the JavaScript advantage, a data-driven approach to inform strategy.
Education Outreach: Abbas Ali (@_abbas) is teaching Laravel at an Indian engineering college, while Povilas references a past podcast with Taylor Otwell and Matt Stauffer advocating PHP in bootcamps. Catching developers young could rebuild the pipeline.
Job Visibility: Povilas inquires about reviving Simon Hamp’s Laravel job board, proposing it as a tool to showcase PHP opportunities and attract talent.
Ease of Use: Simon Hamp advocates for making Laravel as easy to set up, use, and deploy as WordPress was in its heyday, leveraging its strengths to regain market share.
The Bigger Picture: AI’s Role and Industry Shifts
The IEEE’s findings on AI’s impact are particularly telling. As developers turn to private LLM conversations over public forums like Stack Exchange (down to 22% of 2024 levels), language-specific traffic declines. This blurs the lines between languages, potentially leveling the playing field for PHP if the community adapts. However, it also raises questions about the long-term relevance of any single language in an AI-dominated coding landscape.
Looking Ahead: A Path Forward
As of October 25, 2025, the Laravel/PHP community stands at a pivotal moment. The challenges—salary gaps, paid tools, job scarcity, and AI disruption—are real, but the community’s proactive spirit shines through. By investing in education, enhancing job visibility, and simplifying adoption, Laravel can reclaim its allure. The ongoing X thread is a testament to this resilience, inviting all to join the fight.
For developers, startups, and educators, the message is clear: collaboration and innovation are key. Whether through a revived job board, college lectures, or a revamped free-tier ecosystem, the future of Laravel and PHP hinges on adapting to 2025’s technological and economic realities.
The debate is far from over—let’s keep brainstorming!
Top comments (1)
What I read here is not giving me much hope, because it are all just ideas that just scrape the surface.
The reason PHP became popular is because it was the cheapest language to run a database driven website. With the cloud services that advantage diminished.
the reason why PHP is still the most popular language on the internet is because of Wordpress. I don't know any PHP developer that loves Wordpress. It is making the language look like it doesn't evolve.
Is it really a problem that a language fades away? languages never die if you look at the TIOBE index. I guess there are a lot of people who don't even know languages like Delphi and Fortran exist.
We all have our comfort language as developers, and PHP is mine. But if you can't branch out you are not build to be a long term developer.
For people that made the language their business, they have to evolve too if they think the cost is bigger than the gain.
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