Yes, the magic involved in Eloquent ORM, also the central use of Facades or that the models are based on migrations (which uses code comments as a crutch for auto-completion), instead of the migrations being based on the models (how Symfony uses simple PHP objects, from which then Doctrine generates the "missing" migrations).
I can live with both frameworks, but Symfony just feels cleaner and more transparent in its workings without using magic to make things look simpler.
I can live with both frameworks, but Symfony just feels cleaner and more transparent in its workings without using magic to make things look simpler.