What You Should Know Now — and What's Next

What You Should Know Now

• Core syntax: variables, control flow, arrays, functions, superglobals
• Object-oriented programming: classes, interfaces, traits, and enums
• Composer, autoloading, and the PSR standards that let packages work together
• Working with a real database via PDO, sessions, and password hashing
• Exceptions, generators, closures, and testing with PHPUnit
• Modern PHP 8 features: attributes, match, enums, and constructor promotion
• Security fundamentals: SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF
• How a production PHP application is built with Laravel or Symfony, tested, and deployed

What Should You Learn Next?

• Laravel or Symfony in depth — pick one and go deep: routing, middleware, an ORM's relationships, and authentication, building directly on the frameworks overview above.
• A related language — JavaScript, to build an interactive frontend for the APIs you can now write in PHP.
• SQL in depth — you've used SQLite through PDO; learning SQL directly unlocks working with PostgreSQL/MySQL in production.

Build Something

Pick a project idea that solves an actual problem you personally have — and build it with Laravel or Symfony from the start, with a PHPUnit test suite alongside it.