Great response, and you make a great point - focus on coding speed is a great reason to choose Laravel. It's also hugely popular and now with it's LTS, it's going to be around for a while.
For me personally, I was a ZF 1.x guy; when I started a new project I chose Laravel, and it was a dream - crazy zippy (compared to ZF). But as I started to do more with it, I started to need to reduce my feature set, implement performance "features" just to retain a measure of speed.
Is 5.x faster than 4.x? Sure. Does it include batteries and the kitchen sink? You bet. Do I still prefer a faster framework like Phalcon and implement the features I miss myself? Damned skippy.
For me personally, I was a ZF 1.x guy; when I started a new project I chose Laravel, and it was a dream - crazy zippy (compared to ZF). But as I started to do more with it, I started to need to reduce my feature set, implement performance "features" just to retain a measure of speed.
Is 5.x faster than 4.x? Sure. Does it include batteries and the kitchen sink? You bet. Do I still prefer a faster framework like Phalcon and implement the features I miss myself? Damned skippy.