Old-School Craft: The Artisan of the Day Is Simon Hamp.
Simon Hamp has spent roughly a quarter-century building with PHP. He started making small sites for fun, and then ran agencies and built products. Today, he leads the NativePHP project, which aims to bring PHP and Laravel to desktop and mobile apps, and runs Laradevs, the largest directory of vetted Laravel developers.
His work reflects his philosophy as a dev: keep the tools you love, and use them in places people did not expect.
A Long Run in PHP: From Homegrown Frameworks to Laravel
“I’ve been going for a long time, like 23, 24 years, I’ve been a PHP developer,” Simon says. That experience shows. Self-taught, he has shipped sites and apps for many clients and even built his own framework. “I obviously created my own framework, like everybody back then was doing.”
Today, he describes his history as the kind of practice that leads to hard-won taste and sensible defaults.
“I started using Laravel since version 4.2,” Simon says. He remembers the era when people tried all sorts of frameworks, only to realize that Laravel made building enjoyable again. That shift did not erase his old habits. He still calls himself a LAMP-style developer at heart: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, but now with modern tools layered on top.
In 2023, Simon acquired Laradir, a Laravel developer directory, and rebranded it as Laradevs. His aim is to grow the platform into a mighty yet free tool that connects developers and companies directly.
NativePHP: A Small Experience That Turned Big
Another of his projects, NativePHP, started as a small experiment and has turned into something many in the Laravel Community are watching closely. The idea is to let PHP and Laravel developers build desktop and mobile apps without learning an entirely new toolchain. In other words, ship native-looking apps using the same stack you already know.
Simon envisions NativePHP making it easy for not only PHP people, but any developer, to adopt PHP for native apps and bring thousands of new developers into the ecosystem. His dream vision is served, however, with a no-nonsense approach.
As a LAMP developer at heart, he still works on a Mac with PHPStorm. He appreciates how modern Laravel tooling simplifies common tasks, but his approach remains conservative: prefer clarity, testability, and doing things the right way.
“Take your time and do the right thing,” he advises newer developers. That patience is exactly what underlies both long careers and sustainable open source projects.
Speaking and Community Work
Simon started speaking at informal meetups in Birmingham, UK, the kind where devs gathered in pubs to brainstorm. That led to formal meetups and Laravel/PHP talks in London.
After a brief pause during COVID, he returned to speaking with a talk at Laracon EU 2025 and Laravel Live Denmark, titled Building Mobile Apps with PHP, bringing NativePHP back into the spotlight.
Your Story Belongs Here
You don't need to have a course, a talk, or a big launch. If Laravel has been part of your journey (a pivot, a side project, a moment of growth), we'd love to hear about it!
Answer Taylor's questions at laravel.com/stories.
We're always looking to feature developers from every corner of the community. Beginners, builders, behind-the-scenes folks. If Laravel helped you do something you're proud of, that’s a story worth telling.