Having skimmed through several of these chapters, though, I just feel like it’s too similar to the official PHP docs, even down to the TOC.
Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone to put this effort into improving the docs, rather than developing yet another book in a silo that likely won’t have the longevity we’d like?
FWIW, I don’t think giving a more readable aspect to the official docs would be bad. It’s already got way more of that feel than it did in PHP 4, when it had more of an MSDN auto-generated parameter documentation feel. With the clear sections and code snippets I think both could be achieved with little extra effort.
Is there a better language built for rapid web application development. You could debate which is better rails/laravel but in 2019 I would learn php.
You may suggest Go, python, .net, node, Perl or java. They could be used but each only offers an advantage in certain situations and make development slower or have another disadvantage.
If you want to make a website using php is the simplest easiest fastest choice available.
The ‘quick and very dirty’ parts are still there, the ‘clean and efficients’ bits have been added, and there’s a ton of still runnable doc and code lying around.
All of that is a blessing and a curse of course, but I think that makes it a unique proposition.