"String-programming" is mostly optional. Modern Laravel is introducing type-safe alternatives. For instance, instead of doing validation like:

  'gender' => 'in:male,female,other'

You can now do:

  'gender' => Rule::in(['male', 'female', 'other'])

Which, coming from Go, I very much prefer.

Modern PHP is pushing for type-safety (via type-hinting) and Laravel is following this direction as well.