I have been doing a lot of "pros-and-cons" stuff from a little over 2 years now - about using Laravel.
I made it a big deal (and I believe I regret it in a certain capacity).
It should not have been a big deal.
It is a just another framework.
Finally, I have caught up with my senses and I strongly believe that I was too arrogant or stupid to not go down the Laravel path.
I am far too young to allow myself to fall into such traps of "not-wanting-to-do-certain-framework-or-language".
Laravel, here I am, and I have come to bargain... and after that it's you "React JS and React Native"...

Laravel 8.x (latest at this point of time), on PHP 7.4.10 (latest as well)
Docker / docker-compose
Composer 2.0.3 (again, latest, 2.x released a few days back)