Why Laravel Still Matters (A LOT) in AI Coding Age

Hello guys, let's talk about our future as Laravel developers in AI agentic world and reality. Should we stick to Laravel for web projects or should we move to React and Nex.js or something else or just completely abandon Laravel maybe? Of course not. And in this video I will show you why and how Taylor himself is trying his best to keep Laravel very competitive for projects even with AI reality. So first I asked Chad GPT what it would choose based on social sentiments and web search and trends. What would be the language and framework for web projects in 2026? And would you guess the top five? Of course you would probably guess number one. TypeScript and React and Nex.js. And actually I asked the same question to Claude. So this was the question and the result of number one was absolutely the same. So this is a no-brainer. But if you are a Laravel developer mostly for the most part, should you switch to Nex.js or should you continue creating web projects with Laravel? The answer is a bit nuanced. So in this video I will show you the details. Of course with Laravel you can use TypeScript and React and even Nex.js. So one of the Laravel starter kits is React and TypeScript. So it's not either or it's something in between. Let's take a look at positions number two to five. Is there Laravel recommended on the list? Number two is TypeScript with Vue and Next. Then Python with React again with API. Then we have NodeJS and NestJS. And then we have spelt as rising star. So no Laravel and PHP in top five. Maybe it is in the list of Chad GPT. The second place here belongs to NodeJS as back end. Then we have Python with fast API. Then we have Java Spring Boot. another new mentioned and also even C with ASP.NET net again no Laravel. So this is probably a bad news for us as Laravel developers, right? But this can be a bit misleading and I will show you that in a minute. But also Chad GPT added a quick bonus since it knows from history that I'm Laravel Daily Creator. So should Laravel still be in top five? It depends on your market. So in a lot of markets, Laravel remains a very real hiring stack, especially emphasized in small businesses and startup land. For Claude, I asked specifically so it added more honorable mentions and Laravel wasn't even on that list. But when I asked, would Laravel be on the list? Absolutely. Likely around these positions. And then the good a few sources that PHP still powers a lot of the web. Then the challenges as you probably notice yourselves on the market lack of well-paying Laravel PHP jobs compared to other languages and frameworks. So then Claude summarized the top 10 and has put PHP and Laravel somewhere here at top six. Of course this is just the answer of AI assistance but I think it's pretty close to reality. But now let's look at it from another angle. So you're a Laravel developer creating web projects and your plan is to continue creating web projects for the clients and clients often don't choose the text stack themselves. It's your decision to consult to suggest to choose which means if you have the expertise in Laravel and ecosystem around it you would be much faster delivering the results to the client with Laravel compared to you relearning React or something else. Right? And what matters for the client is the end result. So from that point of view, the trends are for overall market for like millions of developers. But what you actually need is a few clients or a few jobs in your specific niche, even if it doesn't follow the top three trends. And also in this AI coding age, if you're effective with Laravel, you will be even more effective with Laravel boost that comes in the starter kit. So you may choose Laravel boost and it has the guidelines for all the popular editors like cloud code and others also guidelines for Laravel ecosystem packages. Here's the list and you can add your own on top. So basically within the framework so-called batteries included approach is also coming to AI coding with Laravel. And as another proof, as I promised, I want to show you the series of tweets by Taylor Otwell about his approach and dedication to this matter. Of course, Taylor is biased as creator of Laravel and I am biased as Laravel Daily channel creator, but still I think this is true and I've experienced it myself on multiple projects with AI coding. So, Laravel is oneshotting pretty complex features just because the ecosystem works together with firstparty and some third-party packages and also the guidelines and also Laravel itself as a framework is mature and pretty stable. So, I personally consider Laravel as almost feature complete since like Laravel 9 or even Laravel 8. So, the core didn't change much. There were new packages, new starter kits, new sugar syntax, new stuff on top of Laravel, but the basics haven't changed much for a while, which is great news for AI because AI is trained on Laravel basics, which didn't change for last years. So, what Taylor is saying in this tweet, just use Laravel boost and it will generate a lot of things in one shot. and also they are moving to skills soon which is a new trend in AI coding. Speaking of trends, Taylor is closely monitoring the trends. He's also a fan of AI and agentic coding. So when Boris from Cloud Code released code simplifier, Taylor was pretty fast to port it to Laravel and PHP and I reviewed it on this channel. If you haven't seen that video, I will link that in the description below. So basically Taylor is shipping fast as well as the same topic of improving Laravel boost for skills for current trends. The same topic but a bit expanded from Taylor Otwell that Laravel has opinions but those opinions are pretty stable and haven't changed again for years. Of course people want to experiment with various patterns but by default Laravel has places where things should go. Probably the biggest change for that was from Laravel 10 to Laravel 11. skeleton did change a lot, but Laravel 11 and 12 are pretty stable with a lot of conventions for basically everything. Taylor is saying, "No, it depends." I would actually argue with that. I have this cap. It's still here. But what Taylor is saying is that the most default conventions are stable and AI agents know about them and generate the code successfully. But also with that we have flexibility. So if you do want react, if you do want viewtel which are mentioned in the very beginning of this video. Yes, you can do that with Laravel with inertia of course on top. And also another tweet I found by Taylor even the documentation was written in markdown which is perfect for AI era and MCPS and agents. So under the hood the docs are actually in markdown and then they're sparsing of that markdown to the web. So my point from this set of tweets is if you're productive with Laravel and you don't feel the need to migrate to somewhere for example if your clients demand or if your job demands that you switch to React or Nex.js or Python or whatever then yes of course but if you have a choice as a web developer you may be very very productive with Laravel in 2026 and beyond. As Taylor is saying, Laravel plus AI agents just works. And also soon we will have Laravel AI SDK somewhere in February. I will be actually in person at Laracon India listening to Taylor and talking to him maybe asking more details. From what I know now, Laravel AI SDK is kind of like Prism package but with another layer on top to manage agents and models and providers more conveniently the whole process. And as a final kind of philosophical note about our future as developers, as I see it, I even asked Gemini to generate Nano Banana, generate the future as I understand it, as I imagine it. Of course, I may be wrong. And of course, this sounds like motivational video now as I'm talking, but I'm just sharing my thoughts, what I think. So on the left, you see the developers as we are now. So we're sitting and typing the code, the commands now to AI agents, overseeing all the code in a few monitors. And on the right, I see developer in probably a few years time more like orchestrator of complex systems and those system would contain many programming languages and techniques. Some of them may be Laravel for the web, some of them may be Python, some of them may be just AI agent in the background. and you will be and we will be the orchestrators of those systems. So I think we won't need that much to sit down and type something like code or even commands to AI agents. We will basically stand and walk around and think more how to manage the systems, how to prompt for the best results, how to deploy it all together to perform with stability, performance and maintainability and stuff like that. Basically, we're coming back to our original job as developers, which is to think instead of type. At least that's how I see the future and Laravel may be a part of it. Maybe not the number one part, but still very very strong and used for many projects. So if you are a Laravel developer now of course expand your horizons with learning with AI how to build AI agents with other languages and frameworks but don't leave Laravel for something else just because of the hype. What do you guys think about my this motivational speech it appeared to be so if you are a Laravel developer are you switching sides and looking left and right and then where to let's discuss all of that in the comments below. That's it for this time and see you guys in other videos.