I stopped reading the minute I saw they are using a template engine for rendering the views. I simply don't get it. Why would someone use a separate template engine when PHP itself is a very good one to use ? Why to add an extra layer to the app ?
We don't have to recreate anything, the views should be pure PHP, not code written in some <insert template engine name here> that is then translated to PHP.
return Model::Find('asdf=1');
and it outputs a json serialized array as html. so your ajax action is like one line of code, yay. or you can $row = Model::Find('asdf=1'); and manipulate in php from there.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSt9rBa_oUM this guys series on laravel is really good.
with no leadership and clear vision CodeIgniter is screwed... L4 follows PHP-Fig standards and it uses composer packaging, it has great leadership, community and is growing...
How?
As for the facade that lets you make a lot of static calls, y'know, I don't think that does significant harm, and it makes it possible to write Laravel code that's almost as easily readable/understandable as Flask and Sinatra.