PHP vs W3Schools

Despite its widespread use, PHP is generally looked upon poorly from a design point of view. The consistency of function names and function argument order, lazily and borderline non-functional implementation of object oriented programming, can only receive requests via POST methods, slow version adoption (the PHP you learn right now may not work on every webserver you'll work on), and a focus on "hacking things together" rather than "doing it right". These are all very common complaints when it comes to working with PHP. While not a bad language to learn, PHP is not at all a good language to learn first, as it will probably teach bad habits.

The most serious security problems in websites on the web today are almost universally found in popular PHP frameworks, CMS platforms, libraries and code samples, almost all stemming from poor language design, bad tutorials and awful resources.

Nobody in their right mind is using PHP for new software, if you decide to learn it as your first language you'll be stuck working in teams with old developers who have had no interest in the computer programming field since they landed their first job while maintaining some 2000 era archaic website codebase.

A lot of very bad tutorials are still widely circulated among beginners, and these tutorials teach very poor programming practices.

Few resources exemplify the "correct" or secure use of features.

If you forget the dollar sign, the variable name will be converted to a string.

The practices that are shown to solve the problems at hand are rarely, if at all, updated. Usually, their tutorials and learning material is updated only after they see their profits drop.

There are multiple errors in the data they show. Although the solutions they show work, they will lead to unmaintainable code. That happens even when the maintainable code alternatives are as easy or accessible to new programmers as the alternatives.

Many professionals in IT agree that w3s certifications are not recognized by them and are deemed useless. Good luck finding any respectable professional that accepts a w3s certification.

What defines what goes is and what gets fixed on w3schools is what gives them profit and what doesn't (through their ads system).

While many learning resources offer a mixture of media in their courses (such as videos, challenges etc.), w3schools offers only written tutorials and code editors. This makes w3schools more beneficial as a quick reference rather than a primary learning resource.