I just took a job as a Laravel dev. I was previously a C#/.Net dev before that. Not making any claims about one being better than the other, but you're right about the ecosystem and the community. It's been great and I've been surprised how quickly I've become productive working in this new ecosystem.
Same experience. I'be been mostly a JavaScript/node and Python/Django dev for over a decade. Recently worked on a few projects with Laravel and its the best experience I've ever had.
