Most MVC PHP projects skip the Presenter. The controller fetches an entity, passes it to a template, and the template handles the rest: formatting dates, computing labels, picking CSS classes from status values. It feels pragmatic at first. It rarely stays that way.
"Micro-framework" gets sold as simplicity. Pick a router, handle requests, stay out of your way. The reality is different: micro doesn't mean simple, it means incomplete by design. The decisions the framework skips become your decisions - and in a project that grows, those decisions accumulate.
Open a Symfony project and the routes are in YAML. The services are in YAML. The bundles are in PHP, but only as an array of class names. Open a Laravel project and routing lives in PHP, but services hide behind ServiceProviders that wrap bindings inside register() and boot() methods. Both approaches put a layer between you and the configuration, and that layer is where every typo, missing key, and "where is this interface bound" question accumulates.
Most PHP projects hardcode their ID generation strategy. Calls to Uuid::uuid4() are scattered across handlers, entities, and tests. When you need to switch to UUID v7 for chronological sorting or ULID for shorter URLs, you end up modifying dozens of files - and hoping you found them all.
A controller reaches into middleware to run business logic. It looks convenient. The middleware has the session, the user, the request body, everything you need. So why bounce through a handler when you can just validate the cart right there? Because the moment you do, your business rule only runs inside an HTTP pipeline, and you just lost the ability to invoke it from anywhere else.