Code Igniter vs Laravel

Things CodeIgniter does better than Laravel

1. It's a bit faster maybe

Once you put Varnish in front of Laravel, then that point goes out of the window.

Varnish doesn't do much for Web Application. We use over 30 internally. When each persons needs to log in (LDAP) and therefore each session is different varnish is worthless. Of course if you are talking about 99% static pages. Then Varnish is great but, at that point the framework or server doesn't matter. a RaspberryPi Running LAMP and the mosted bloated slowest framework you can find could spit out those pages directly into varnish and cache them for 12 hours.

One thing that I like about Laravel is that lots of packages are available for it.  Check this out as an example:

Code:

http://www.reddit.com/r/PHP/comments/2mvrek/laravel_5_scheduler/

I had to write my own scheduler with CI, as there wasn't one I could find.  But here it will be for Laravel 5.  and 5?  Damn, this framework is moving along and CI 3 still hasn't been delivered!

PHP (and therefore CodeIgniter) supports composer just head over to packagist and go shopping... The best packages are framework agnostic. Whenever I need a new library I head to packagist first before anywhere else. I think I am using over 20 packages at last count. Look at http://thephpleague.com/ some of the best PHP dev's are working on those. I don't think they are Laravel specific (IIRC) which means ANY framework can use them.
I wouldn't brag about it moving forward so fast. Who is left updating a Laravel 4 applications after everyone has moved to Laravel 5? Who's patching v4 package bugs and adding new features? (does anyone remember Laravel 3?) I have over 200 controllers and 100 models in just one application alone. I mean who in their right mind wants to update that year after year after year because my framework just wants to be "cool"?

Just remember, that Laravel is a really well thought out framework headed and supported by some of the more advanced php programmers out there. Whether we like it or not, the direction of the PHP language and Laravel are moving along hand in hand. At the rate it's been going for the last few years, Codeigniter will become completely obsolete if it doesn't play serious catch up.

Agreed.  Shame we don't have some of those "advanced php programmers" here.  I may wait until 5 is out and then go through the framework source.  

Catch up to what? The paying client could careless if it's QuickBasic running as a CGI or Laravel 5? Who's paying your bills? The customers or the developers?

https://github.com/ProjectOrangeBox / https://github.com/dmyers2004