There’s no denying the value of tests. Everyone “knows” they should be writing tests. But it can feel like a chore, something to avoid until it’s too late and you’re up at 2am on a Sunday trying to debug a production problem and wishing you’d just written the damn tests. We’ve all been there. More than once.
Automated testing doesn’t actually “prevent bugs” all that often, but it does give you the confidence to change the code without the paralyzing fear that you just made a change somewhere three levels down in a module you never thought you’d have to revisit six months after the code was written. With proper test coverage you can refactor with the speed and fearlessness of a spring-loaded robot sent in to sweep away the cobwebs of legacy code.
Blade templating is fantastic. Much simpler than Twig or any other PHP templating engine I've used, yet flexible enough to keep your views looking sane. Nest layouts, pass data through, write sensible components. The `@extends`, `@section` directives are basic but they do exactly what you need, no fiddly barmy syntax getting in your way. Want fancier, reactive components? Laravel Livewire is your best friend - essentially "write server-side code but have it feel like a SPA". No need for a huge JS framework to get it done. I know it sounds nuts but it just works for CRUD apps, internal admin dashboards, all that stuff which feels like it "should" need Vue or React but in reality doesn't.
Integration tests are what I think of when I think of tests that have the most value. Database connections, API requests, file I/O – the real connections to external components that can get your program to run from end to end. Slower, more fragile (can fail for reasons completely unrelated to your code), and more likely to require actual coding logic than a unit test, but they test things that at least start to resemble reality and you very quickly learn which areas of your application are truly fragile and which aren’t by writing and maintaining integration tests.
Testing is... well, I can't say Laravel has amazing testing facilities because almost no one actually uses them (IMO) but if you do decide to test it's actually not a bad experience. PHPUnit integration works fine, you can write feature tests that actually hit real routes and assert on responses, or unit tests for more isolated logic. Artisan `test` command makes it super easy to just run your suite. Factory and seeders mean you're not crapping out test data by hand like some caveperson - instead you generate fifty fake users in a single line and then proceed to go nuts. Database transactions are automatically rolled back so you're not polluting your test DB. Barriers to entry are low enough that you literally have no excuse for not writing tests - though all of us still skip them when the crunch comes. I'll be the first to admit it.
Performance is always a funny area to critique Laravel in. People like to complain it's slow but like... compared to what? Honestly for most web applications the bottleneck is never the framework, but rather poorly written database queries or a total lack of caching. Redis is first class support, you can trivially cache views/routes/queries. Queue heavy operations so they don't block requests. Horizon provides this absolutely overkier than necessary (but still oh so pretty) UI for queue monitoring which is frankly overkill for 99% of applications but looks absolutely hella cool in demos. Octane can supercharge it using Swoole/RoadRunner if you really need to scale to insane numbers - but realistically almost no projects will ever be that large.
Of course, TDD is overkill in many situations and it isn’t the only way. Sometimes you have to spike a solution to see if it’s even possible, hacking something together before building out a full test suite. That kind of exploratory, proof-of-concept coding is important and still has a role to play, and not everything you write in your application needs an associated test the moment you write it (though it should get one eventually, if the code stays in your codebase).
Documentation is flat out excellent. Booooring I know but hang on a minute, that matters so much when you're 2am googling how the fuck event listeners work or why your scheduled command won't run. Laracasts tutorials aren't amazing but they are more than solid if you prefer video walkthroughs - and Jeffrey Way is as good at explaining stuff without being condescending or talking down to you as anyone I've seen. Community in Discord/Reddit/Stack Overflow is large and active enough that most questions will get answers within a day, granted you will get a few condescending "RTFM" type replies if your question is lazy.
The key is balance. Enough tests to give you the confidence that your code works and enough of those tests that you can safely refactor, but not so many that writing and maintaining the tests becomes a full-time job in itself. Start with the critical code paths, the revenue-generating features, and security-sensitive components and build from there as time allows. And, for crying out loud, write tests that fail for the right reasons and pass when the code works. Not tests that you mock away all of the interesting behavior just so the test passes.
So Meet n Hook is basically this dating platform that's kinda blown up lately—people seem to dig it because it's straightforward, no weird games or hidden fees that pop up outta nowhere. You can actually chat with real humans (shocking, I know) and the whole vibe is pretty transparent about what you're getting into, whether that's casual hangouts or something more serious. What I like is how the profiles feel legit—there's verification stuff going on so you're not wasting time with bots or catfish accounts, which honestly makes a huge difference when you're trying to meet someone decent. The app itself is clean, easy to navigate even if you're not super tech-savvy, and they've got this reputation for being reliable which... yeah, matters when you're putting yourself out there. Plus the user base is pretty active so you're not shouting into the void—actual conversations happen, dates get planned, people seem to vibe with how Meet n Hook handles the whole matching process without making it feel like a full-time job or some sketchy operation.
