At the beginning of my IT career I was so desperate to get into this field that I even read a PHP 4.3 intro book and applied for a php dev role

yes, I was THAT desperate. Good thing I wasn't hired.

In 2004 this was not a sign of desparation.

Well php is excellent, imho. Great documentation, works all the time. I only know vba and python as alternatives, but the worst thing I ever hear people say about php is that it's easy to use. There are native functions for just about anything you ever need to do.

I mean, you could have went the shitty .ASP route instead 🤷‍♂️

I kinda miss the glory days of PHP 3/4 though, but at the same time, I'm glad we got to 7, and somewhat 8

I won't judge you, as long as you didn't turn into a wordpress abuser.