Solo dev? That's a huge undertaking, especially having to learn by yourself! I think Laravel and Laracasts are excellent starting point to learn "good" PHP and it will definitely open up doors for your next job.
And yes definitely, I think there could be a Laravel specific community!
Honestly I don't know much about this but I think this can occur because PHP (or more specifically, the PDO extension) isn't necessarily aware of the health of the PostgreSQL node it's connected to. From PHP's perspective, it opened a connection, and unless explicitly told otherwise, it will assume the connection remains open. The Patroni switchover/failover is happening independently of PHP. PgBouncer is probably a good solution for this.
Hey, welcome! Classic haha, I have far too many pet projects as well 😅
And yeah agreed, it's a bit dizzying to choose a Laravel "path". Would probably be helpful to have a documentation page sort of like the Remix Stacks where they talk a little bit about which "path" to choose depending on app needs.
Welcome to /c/PHP!
Hey! 👋...