The "architecture" change is the bootstrap repository, which has a new folder structure. I know, scary stuff! Folders!
The "architecture" has some enhancements to middleware and fleshing out events/commands to a "command bus". Basically, you get more sugar on top of the (mostly) same architecture.
Whoops caused a lot of headaches behind the scenes, and did stupid things like convert ALL http error responses to 500, even on a 404 error (which showed up in Whoops, as HTTP errors are converted to exceptions within Symfony's HTTP stack).
Blade tags have one new tag, and the old ones still works.
This point might be the subjective one - HTML library. HTML libraries create an enormous amount of support for people's edge cases and generally are better pushed out as a third-party add on to suit your needs. The upgrade guide explains how you can add them back in if you want. https://github.com/illuminate/html
That's a shitty explanation for dropping Whoops. The first time I remember the discussion of it being dropped got brought up was because of a bug in the framework relating to the assets, where Taylor didn't hesitate to blame Whoops and deleted comments on Github pointing out that the problem was actually in his own code.
It would've been super easy to add some code that sets the HTTP code for Whoops's response if that was the problem - but the fact is you should demand your framework users define their own 404 handlers.
The old Blade tags now escape all HTML, that hardly counts as working.
You can easily change the config to make the Blade tags work as they previously did. I'm unhappy about this change as well though. It's very reminiscent of some design decisions PHP has taken:
1. Create feature X.
2. Users don't understand feature X, and use it when they should be using feature Y (for safety.)
3. Update the API so that feature X does what feature Y did, and create feature Z that now does what feature X did.
4. Old users using feature X incorrectly are now protected, while users who correctly used feature X must now convert to feature Z.
Not being familiar with Laravell, having a look at[1], I see what you mean:
> In Laravel 4 Blade included the following two styles: {{ and {{{.
> The double curly bracket was a raw echo and the triple curly bracket escaped.
>
> Now both the double and triple curly brackets escape the variable and a new {!! $var !!} is for raw.
I'd argue that having unescaped output be shorter/easier than escaped output was probably a design error in earlier versions -- but I'm not sure I like the "fix"... If it was a green-field design, I must admit I like the "danger!"-feel that unescaped output has in L5 though.
The "architecture" change is the bootstrap repository, which has a new folder structure. I know, scary stuff! Folders!
The "architecture" has some enhancements to middleware and fleshing out events/commands to a "command bus". Basically, you get more sugar on top of the (mostly) same architecture.
Whoops caused a lot of headaches behind the scenes, and did stupid things like convert ALL http error responses to 500, even on a 404 error (which showed up in Whoops, as HTTP errors are converted to exceptions within Symfony's HTTP stack).
Blade tags have one new tag, and the old ones still works.
This point might be the subjective one - HTML library. HTML libraries create an enormous amount of support for people's edge cases and generally are better pushed out as a third-party add on to suit your needs. The upgrade guide explains how you can add them back in if you want. https://github.com/illuminate/html