Taylor Otwell built Laravel for himself. Millions of developers followed.

Laravel, a PHP framework created by Taylor Otwell in 2011, has grown significantly from a side project into a robust ecosystem with a team of 90 people. Initially built as a comprehensive framework for full-stack web applications, Laravel introduced Laravel Forge in 2013, a deployment platform that quickly gained traction and allowed Otwell to focus full-time on Laravel by 2015. Despite PHP's mixed reputation, Laravel has thrived, benefiting from PHP's evolution in speed, type safety, and security. In recent years, the introduction of Laravel Cloud, a fully managed deployment platform, marks a strategic move upmarket to cater to enterprises and existing users with complex infrastructure needs. Additionally, the framework's maturity has enabled the development of an MCP server that leverages large language models (LLMs) to efficiently generate Laravel code, illustrating the framework's adaptability to new technological trends. The interview highlights the challenges new frameworks face in gaining traction without pre-existing training data for LLMs, contrasting with established frameworks like Laravel and Tailwind CSS that naturally fit into the AI-driven development landscape.