Isn't PHP itself a bit weird? I am guessing any framework that tries to leverage it might also be.

Years and years ago (I'm essentially retired now) I used something called Lithium (aka li₃) that followed the same basic design patterns as Laravel, but I thought looked a little cleaner under the hood.

It uses the same bootstrapping framework, along with controllers, etc.

I have to add that I never tried Laravel. I only checked it out when deciding between the two frameworks.

It was so long ago that li₃ may have changed significantly since I last used it (I only used it for one project because the client "really wanted PHP"). Sometimes it's best not to argue.

Here is their doc site if anyone is interested:

https://li3.me/docs/api/lithium/2.0.x/lithium

And the source code github site (looks like the people who are contributing are still the originators of the framework):

https://github.com/UnionOfRAD/lithium

Thanks for the fun article. Took me back about a decade! :-)