PHP isn't dead. Laravel is just bloated. Here's what I made instead | Hacker News Reader

PHP isn't dead. Laravel is just bloated. Here's what I made instead

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14 pointsJeremieF27 comments

Based on the title I'd not use the project... Laravel is a superb framework that has a very nice developer experience, no need to call it names to promote your own project.

https://github.com/jeremie5/dataphyre/blob/main/common/datap... https://github.com/jeremie5/dataphyre/blob/main/common/datap... https://github.com/jeremie5/dataphyre/blob/main/common/datap...

I don't know what you want to say with those screenshots.

I think you get backlash here, because you tried to promote your own work with the argument that the work of other people is bad. Since you attacked potentially a few thousand developers, you should expect negative reactions.

Even if you hadn't attacked the most used PHP framework, it has a sour taste to shit on someone else's work.

FYI regarding licensing:

> If your use of this software results in revenue exceeding $10,000 USD per year, you are required to obtain a commercial license. This license permits you to use, modify, and distribute the software in commercial applications.

> Conditions:

> A commercial license must be procured before utilizing this software in any application that generates revenue exceeding $10,000 USD per year.

> You must contact the author to negotiate the terms of the commercial license, including any applicable fees.

Yeah, that’s right. It's free if you're not making serious money with it. But if your app's pulling over $10k/year, I ask for a commercial license, it would be rather reasonable.

I’m solo on this, and I’d like to put some (better) food on the table — that’s really the reason behind it.

Doesn't that put the ball a bit far in your court? Once they're already up and running is where you get to dictate any terms to them that would be slightly better than them having to rewrite it with something else.

I get the concern, but I’m not trying to squeeze anyone.

If someone’s making $10k/year using Dataphyre, I’d be genuinely happy with $5/month. I’m just trying to keep this alive and sustainable as a solo dev.

It’s not about control. It’s about being able to put food on the table without VC pressure or paywalls for everything.

Was a hardcode PHP dev for many years. A quick look at the code makes me glad I left this ecosystem behind - it looks like a brittle maintenance nightmare! It's no wonder there's trace log lines scattered all over the place. There doesn't seem to even a sniff of anything related to testing here. It's insane to me to try promote this over Laravel.

That’s fair at first glance, but Dataphyre actually includes a built-in diagnostic engine (Dpanel) that: - Validates PHP syntax before runtime - Runs JSON-defined unit tests with dependency checks - Supports perf assertions, expected types, regex, and even custom scripts - Auto-discovers tests inside each module’s unit_tests/ folder - It’s designed to diagnose, trace, and stress-test production modules, not just simulate behavior in CI.

I get that the structure may look unorthodox, but it’s built for resilience and self-healing. Would love for you to take a deeper look, I think you might be surprised.

Looking at the code of your project: This is exactly why PHP has such a bad reputation.

Totally fair to have that opinion — but the code you’re seeing runs a real-world platform with live users, 3.5M+ SLOC.

I didn’t write this to win style points. I wrote it to survive production firestorms and scale without dependencies.

Happy to take real feedback though — got a specific part you think could be improved?

I agree about Laravel, to an extent. It's so big that it feels like more tail than dog for small- to medium-sized projects. Personally, I like CodeIgniter for those projects - it's lightweight and doesn't try to do everything under the sun. The documentation is clear and concise and consistent from version to version. CodeIgniter's not very exciting and it doesn't need to be, nor does it try to be. Mostly, it does exactly what it says on the label and no more.

And you don't need to pay for classes to understand it.

I am a die-hard advocate of the Phalcon approach to this problem, which is to deliver the framework as a PHP extension. It requires slightly more admin experience to get it setup, but boy is it fast!

> Why reinvent the wheel when you can just make the wheel faster.

What process makes a wheel faster that does not imply some degree of invention?

The difference between copying and innovating is often just velocity.

OP: If your issue was with Laravel's bloated design, then could you please adress the PHPhant in the room as what's your stand with symphony?

Haha, fair — I love the pun.

My issue isn't with PHP as a language. It’s with frameworks that try to do everything for everyone, and end up adding layers of abstraction, indirection, and performance overhead by default — even before you write your first line of app logic.

Symfony, like Laravel, is very capable — but to me, it’s too prescriptive. You either embrace the full stack or fight against the grain. I wanted something where:

- Every module but the core is optional - No need to use the CLI, just drag and drop and it handles it

The templating system, cache, and routing all talk directly

So I wrote Dataphyre — modular, dependency-free, fast as hell. It powers a 3.5M-line ecommerce platform (Shopiro) with a sharded replicated containerized CDN system able of 8k streaming, a fulltext search engine, the "usual" templating and async, all built in.

I'm not sure about your argument. For example, symphony can be used as a micro-framework since a long time (https://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-2-8-symfony-as-a-mic...) and very few dependencies are required.

Relying on such heavy tested is a no brainier for me, especially because it offer well designed abstractions. You seem to see them as dragging you down, I see them as opportunity to have hooks at the right place for free.

Symfony does offer flexibility with its micro-framework mode. But even in that mode, looking at the screenshot in the article you shared, it still adds around 6ms and 2MB just for the controller initialization (probably a tad better with JIT). On the other hand, Dataphyre initializes in ~490KB as of now and serves hello world pages in about ~2.5ms. My issue isn't with abstractions — it's about avoiding unnecessary overhead. Having started off in embedded programming, I’ve always been driven to chase every byte and clock cycle I can. Dataphyre gives you the freedom to choose what's needed, and that’s why it's able to run an entire 3.5M-line platform while staying lean and fast.

Interesting, thanks

Post it on reddit to roast you.

Unfortunate that people got their underwear in a bunch over this title which precluded good technical discussion. Laravel is definitely feeling heavier and heavier these days (to be fair I still use it a lot and still appreciate it a lot). I love to see performant competition

PHP is in decline, and rightly so. I don't understand this urge of holding on to PHP with a panicked iron grip when there are so many better languages, regardless of which metrics one happens to care about. Whatever

I still use it all the time. It's like saying sqlite, grep or awk is in decline. I'm sorry people do stupid things with tools that are easy to use but that's how it is.

I use php in a bunch of places I don't really care about. And if told you about them, you wouldn't either. That's why it's a great fit.

dumb and stupid is sometimes a great answer.

Define “better.” JavaScript?

It's not about the language itself, it's about the whole ecosystem around PHP. You have battle tested solutions for everything. And PHPStan is just the cherry on the cake for every old/new PHP project.

"PHP is in decline" or "PHP is dead" can be happily ignored. People saying this based on “data” pulled out of someone else's butt. This is going on since almost 10 years, and it is wrong since ever. PHP is chugging along just fine and will do this for the coming decades. PHP is in this regard the COBOL of the web.

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