10 years experience
Have been around PHP development since 2000, before graduation, learning to generate HTML as a templating language and algorithm oriented...
Have been around PHP development since 2000, before graduation, learning to generate HTML as a templating language and algorithm oriented as OOP methodology (since PHP 5).
To fully understand the concepts of the common AMP stack ( Apache, MySQL and PHP) the need to deploy WebServers in different operating systems was required, focusing on a later stage on Linux administration.
From mod_php using Apache, to more modern approaches using nGinx + PHP-FPM, as long as PHP is fine-tuned and in sync with the database tweaking, all problems can be performant on any running server.
On a programming language basis, PHP has faced many challenges, as with PHP 7 and the introduction of new concepts required learning new code and design patterns to keep up with its evolution.