When I became a Junior Developer I felt like I am at a good place, I can solve most problems, I can work with PHP and fix smaller bugs. After a year of working I became a Medior. I thought it was a little bit fast, buy hey, I was proud. But to my biggest surprise, after another half a year I was being asked, when I want to take the leap to become a Senior Developer. The Medior level was more than a challenge for me already and I was overwhelmed with the topics I was missing for the Senior level.

I refused and took a little break from progressing my career and started teaching the basics to a couple of interns. Before this phase I did not beleive the saying: "learning by teaching", but it was true. I gathered confidence as I reviewed topics with my students and together we were able to explore new technologies. After this experience I started to learn again on my own and the biggest help was to set up a progressions plan, instead of just reading about whatever topics I could find on the internet.

For PHP projects you are definitely going to be a web developer of some sort. You either will build a traditional web application or more likely, an API. If you are confident building your business logic around these "2 types of PHP applications", then you can start learning some concepts you might have missed for your Senior Interview.

This book can be used as a standalone material, but by design it serves as a continuation of The Missing Step book. Some parts of that book will be repeated in this one, but concepts that are applicable for both traditional web applications and APIs, won't be! If you are confident building traditional web application, then jump right in and learn everything about building an API with PHP!