I think php should have stopped at php4 or php5 and maybe just develop a new/sane standard library.

And a new language could have been developed , call it hack or whatever Facebook tried. Anyway I remember php coding gave me headaches. Tried it again 2 years ago and found out the same kind of issues(outdated /inexistent documentation, different ways to do the same thing that actually didn’t work and stuff like that). Try to connect to sql database using ssl and see what I mean.

I see no reason to learn PHP anymore or start up your company using php. We live in a vps/docker age. The advantage of php hosts everywhere has been lost.