Simon Vrachliotis - React, the Laravel way - Laracon AU 2025

Simon shares how Laravel and Inertia transformed his ability to ship full stack React projects after years of JavaScript ecosystem fatigue. He walks through the ergonomics of JSX, the overwhelm of modern tooling, and the moment Laravel’s batteries included philosophy unlocked a simpler, more joyful workflow. 📚 ## Chapters 00:49 Hot take: React has a big problem with a Laravel shaped solution; Laravel makes React better 02:22 Simon’s history: from Drupal and WordPress to a decade in JavaScript frameworks and design engineering 03:11 Prototyping in the browser and embracing chaos 04:14 Tailwind and JSX as rapid prototyping syntaxes 05:03 JSX explained 06:57 Loops in JSX versus Vue’s DSL, and using JavaScript’s .map to generate components 08:12 Colocating functions and components in a single file for rapid iteration 09:52 Why JSX plus Tailwind is ideal for design engineers 10:48 React’s core mental model 12:05 The big problem: React is only the UI layer 12:52 The overwhelming size and speed of the JavaScript ecosystem 14:29 Simon’s personal struggle 16:04 Acknowledging the broader problem of ecosystem fatigue 17:02 Returning again to Laravel, questioning PHP in 2020 and early confusion around Inertia’s messaging 17:48 Attempting Laravel as a backend API for Next.js 18:55 The TypeScript and PHP gap, leading to another abandoned attempt 19:23 Seeking guidance from experienced Laravel devs, reconnecting with Adam Wathan 20:07 Adam’s advice and why he still loves Laravel and uses Inertia with React 20:37 Simon commits to trying Laravel properly this time 20:54 Inertia’s ergonomics on the frontend feel native to React 21:31 Realising Inertia already solved issues he celebrated in Remix https://x.com/simonswiss https://bsky.app/profile/simonswiss.com https://laracon.au