I don't know

Being online, I've gotten the impression that two groups of PHP developers are seriously divided: there are Symfony devs saying that Laravel is a hacky framework that leads to disaster, and there are Laravel devs saying that Symfony is a bloated framework that takes huge amounts of time to get things done.

I've always assumed this mentality existed mostly thanks to "being online", and that when it came to face-to-face interactions, people would be more forgiving towards each other.

Apparently, that assumption is wrong 😅

Last week, I went to SymfonyCon, and a year ago I went to Laracon. It turns out people are as harsh towards the other community in real life as they are online.

I'm baffled by this sentiment. There's no denying that people are building successful things with Symfony, just like there's no denying people are building successful things with Laravel. Why does anyone feel the need to convince me or others that their choice is superior? Why do we feel the need to pick sides? Why does it matter that someone else uses another solution to the same problem, if they manage to solve that problem equally well? Why do we feel the need to identify so strongly with a framework, that we need to dismiss the other?

I don't know.

Maybe we should say that more often: "I don't know", especially when it comes to the other side, and give them the benefit of the doubt.

What are your thoughts? Have you had the same experience? Maybe completely the opposite? Let me know!

PS: there were also a bunch of nice people at both SymfonyCon and Laracon, maybe that's good to mention as well 😁