“ Never heard of Laravel. Decided to take a look. First thing the intro documentation says to do is install something called 'Docker Desktop'. I'm good, thanks. Why do I need Docker to play around with a web framework?”

Because modern web development is complex, and Docker helps make that burden less so.

You make it sound like you took one look at the docs, and that was just too much for you to go any further.

Don’t get into front end development, because you’ll lose your mind.