I've been using PHP for about 19 years and what I can tell is that both the language and its community have evolved the right way. Writing modern PHP is a joy, IDE support is great and we have tools for everything.
Modern PHP is about community standards, not about any particular framework and exposing Laravel as the best way to get started with PHP is questionable. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting to learn (real) PHP.
The article praises PHP but it is sad that doesn't link to any other resource or project which ditches the value of PHP community.
Laravel is great for RAD which is attractive for small projects. The kind of stuff "business with 500K orders runs on a $6 VPS" thing. For clients wanting a robust software system you can use a better tool.