This one also gave me a little hope for the framework. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes from what I can see. Which can be good depending on the project. Laminas had some of that also, but kind of moved away from that. Like the ability to assume the framework looks up a model for you and you can just accept it in the controller. All based on the route binding model in the routing. Which kind of explains the option to add a model in the controller setup from artisan.
I also liked in the views the ability to set an alternate method type for the forms. As forms really only have GET and POST, with an @method function in the view you can set other types. Which unfortunately only helps for routing. The method just added a hidden _method variable with the method name. Which I am guessing Laravel reads and routes accordingly.
The model class seems to do much of the heavy lifting. There are functions like find, create, update and delete, which I would more expect in a database object than a data storage object. This way is convenient, but at a cost I would think.
I do like the addition of the sub-directories for the views. So you can have components for your views that are separate from the main components. Which kind of helps to modulorize the views a bit. There was another interesting option for routes to be able to take the name of the function as part of the URL. Which is similar to what Laminas has for routing, but this was simpler.
The next couple lessons are on authentication and authorization, which they gave a bit of a preview on authorization. Should be interesting to see how they add that to this project.