What is Status codes in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application?

What is Status codes in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application? In Laravel, status codes should be understood as part of a larger application architecture rather than as an isolated API call. Response helpers can set an HTTP status code appropriate for success, validation failure, not-found conditions or server errors. A strong understanding includes its purpose, the layer where it belongs, the data or request flow it affects, and the situations where another mechanism may be more appropriate. Practical context: Laravel provides helpers and response objects for returning views, redirects, JSON data, files, downloads and other HTTP responses. The specific focus here is status codes: Response helpers can set an HTTP status code appropriate for success, validation failure, not-found conditions or server errors. This question is designed to test not only terminology, but also how the concept fits into Laravel's request, application, database, security, or deployment workflow.