@lefticus it was very funny to hear you of all people, Mr. "I've started telling people I'm a youtuber" react that way to #PHP on #CppCast.
#ModernPHP has a lot of similarities to #ModernCPP.

I haven't gotten very far in my own journey (hopefully next year I'll be modernizing a PHP code base) but you would download the jetbrains IDE, turn on all the tools, and take all the best practices hints.
It uses classes and defined interfaces and has a package manager, it really feels like a new language