&gt; I urged him to switch to a sane framework like Laravel<p>...why didn&#x27;t you taught him about PDO, so he can start with something more universal, not tied to one particular framework that happens to be popular nowadays?!<p>Then he can learn whichever OR&#x2F;DM or DAL he might like need (Eloquent, Doctrine, Redbean, IdiORM&#x2F;Paris etc.), and also be able to pop the hood and debug it when needed.<p>I never get it why so many otherwise-good PHP devs have their heads full of framework-specific knowledge and have a propensity to fall in love with heavy frameworks like Laravel, or worse, with leviathans like Symphony or Zend ...instead of playing to the language&#x27;s advantages and using light-weight tools and libraries that would allow them to move faster.