&gt; instead of playing to the language&#x27;s advantages and using light-weight tools and libraries that would allow them to move faster.<p>Depending on what you mean by &quot;move faster&quot;, I may have to disagree. Besides a one-off script, I can&#x27;t envision a scenario where using &quot;tools and libraries&quot; would allow you to move faster than using Laravel.<p>Laravel comes with an unbelievable amount of stuff done for you, right out of the box. Routing, Auth, Database, Queueing, Caching, Asset Pipeline, Templating, etc, etc. If your goal is to rapidly develop an application, there really is no better framework than Laravel to get that going. There&#x27;s even a vagrant box that&#x27;s all tooled for Laravel.<p>TBF, I may have misunderstood what you meant by &quot;move faster&quot;.