If I Had to Restart My Laravel Journey, I'd Do These 6 Things Differently.
It all started in July 2021. I was just trying to get any opportunity I could. My focus was on QA, frontend design, or WordPress – anything that didn’t involve heavy coding. Backend Development wasn’t even something I considered.
My PHP knowledge? Very basic. I knew syntax, variables, and maybe a “for” loop. That’s it. No understanding of OOP, functions, or proper logic building.
And somehow… I got a job as a Laravel Developer.
The Beginning: Copy, Paste, Repeat.
I had heard of the term “Laravel”, but didn’t really know what it was. No research. No curiosity. I just jumped in. I watched a random YouTube video that showed how to build a simple CRUD application. I followed along, copied everything, and got it working. At that moment, I thought: “Laravel is easy.” That confidence didn’t last long.
Soon, I was assigned a real task – replicate an admin dashboard and make some changes. At first, it felt manageable as I had already seen the CRUD operations and knew how to loop through data using Blade. But things started getting complex, and I started struggling. I didn’t understand error messages, debugging, or why something worked or failed. Whenever I got stuck, I relied mostly on Senior developers rather than research or going through the docs or community support.
Then one day, everything changed. All the experienced developers left the company. And suddenly, I was on my own. No one to guide me. No one to fix my errors. Simple tasks started taking weeks. I kept trying different solutions; some worked, some didn’t. It was frustrating and slow. But this phase forced me to grow.
The Turning Point
Since no one was there to guide me, at the same time, I had to guide the interns. And that’s when I realized something important. I couldn’t teach what I didn’t understand. So, I finally did what I should have done right from the beginning. I started going through the docs, learning the core concepts like request lifecycle, service providers, facades, queues, logging, lazy/eager loading, and many more. I started implementing these things on my project and then started understanding how things worked. I started writing down the logic in a notebook – breaking problems into smaller steps. This actually helped me grow and do better than how I actually start.
What Actually Helped Me Grow as a Laravel Developer
Until then, I depended heavily on YouTube videos and some tutorial blogs. These helped me get started, but they only showed how to do things—not why.
But going through the documentation and community support platforms was different.
It helped me understand:
· How Laravel works internally
· MVC architecture
· Request lifecycle
· Error handling
· Security practices
· Writing clean code and many more
That’s when things started to make sense. I stopped copying code blindly. I started understanding it.
Where I Am Now as a Laravel Developer.
Five years later, I am a completely different developer. Now I focus on writing clean and structured code, handling errors properly, building secure applications, following Laravel best practices, and not limiting my skills to Laravel only. It’s no longer about making things work—it’s about building things the right way.
If I Could Start Again as a Laravel Developer
If I had to restart my Laravel journey, I would keep it simple and focus on these things:
Learn the Basics first: Learn Laravel from scratch. Understand PHP properly – OOP, functions, and logic building.
Use documentation as a main guide: Videos are helpful, but documentation gives real depth.
Build, Break, and Fix: Practice by building, breaking, and fixing rather than watching tutorials.
Learn debugging early: Understanding errors is one of the most important skills.
Don’t copy blindly: Take time to understand someone else’s code.
Focus on concepts, not just code: Syntax is easy. Understanding is what matters.
Final Thoughts
Looking back, I took a longer path. I relied too much on shortcuts, and it slowed me down. But once I started focusing on fundamentals and understanding the “why” behind things, everything changed. If you’re starting Laravel today, don’t rush. Take your time. Learn properly. Build things. Break things. Fix them. That’s how you actually grow.