Two years of Laravel freelancing. An apprenticeship with Symfony on the menu. I complained. Then I understood.
Laravel: productivity first
Rails-like, opinionated, magical. `php artisan` does everything. Eloquent is addictive. For an indie hacker, it's perfect.
Symfony: rigor above all
No magic. Every service is explicit. The dependency injection container is bare and transparent. It takes more effort. And it trains you better.
What Symfony taught me
Real separation of concerns. Design patterns used consciously. Native testability. Why large enterprise applications prefer Symfony.
My verdict
Laravel for fast solo projects. Symfony for long-term team projects. Both deserve mastery.