I find it pretty fascinating that what used to be a beginner-friendly language, with limited capabilities but that is very easy to get started with, has now evolve to a bloated monster full of advanced features that you can't expect to know entirely, with a complex framework and tooling ecosystem to support it.
PHP lovers generally don't like acknowledge that, but the PHP we've learned back-end development two decades ago is no more and that it's now as beginner unfriendly as Java was when we picked it.
It's a pity because there's nothing as beginner-friendly anymore. I think the blame is on people calling themselves “PHP developers” who never bothered learning more advanced languages after PHP and instead pushed PHP to reach parity with those, at the expanse of losing its soul.
PHP lovers generally don't like acknowledge that, but the PHP we've learned back-end development two decades ago is no more and that it's now as beginner unfriendly as Java was when we picked it.
It's a pity because there's nothing as beginner-friendly anymore. I think the blame is on people calling themselves “PHP developers” who never bothered learning more advanced languages after PHP and instead pushed PHP to reach parity with those, at the expanse of losing its soul.