Is PHP a good first programming language?

I started coding in 2007 to build a website for a Tae Kwon-Do School I used to train at.

It was written with HTML and CSS and only contained a few small pages.

When I wanted to add more dynamic content, such as news articles and events, I started to expand and started to use PHP and MySQL.

PHP was a great first programming language for me (ignoring HTML and CSS), and it's gone through so many improvements since 2007, as well as the PHP content management systems and frameworks.

I think a lot of new coders only learn or are taught JavaScript and I can understand why if they've only got a short time, such as on a bootcamp, but I also think there is a benefit to learning another language - such as PHP.

PHP has Composer to manage dependencies, various robust content management systems and frameworks, PHPUnit and Pest for automated testing, PHPStan and Psalm for static analysis, and much more.

I'd definitely recommend taking a look at PHP if you haven't already.