Well anything is better than the old and original Mysql extension for PHP. If you Google &quot;PHP MySQL tutorial&quot;, there&#x27;s lots of tutorials teaching still about mysql_connect and mysql_query.<p>AR is controversial but it is approachable.<p>In addition, I figure, those old PHP tutorials (code like it&#x27;s the 2003!) are giving bad example and beginners can&#x27;t understand the difference or realize that mysql_query + bunch of procedural code per file * 10 can be bad thing.<p>I should&#x27;ve been a bit more clearer. Laravel taught him bunch of generic best practices (like deployment procedures, GIT, OOP, MVC, etc) and using Laravel Query Builder and&#x2F;or Eloquent makes the DB code more sane compared to mysql_query.<p>Laravel isn&#x27;t the only framework which could&#x27;ve done this but like AR, it&#x27;s quite beginner friendly :)