There's nothing like being able to write backend code directly in HTML files, without even having to start a new server process. It's literally just a .php file executed and served to the user.
It starts as the ultimate anti-structure. Nothing, not even MVC. But then you can refactor parts out of it and start moving towards a structure. Very freeing if it's a small one-off page/project and you know what structure works for you.
(Of course, if you need a database and authentication and Scaling and so forth, that's when you start bringing in the heavy artillery (libraries and packages), or switch to a framework.)
I volunteered to help .netart artists in the early 2000's to get their code working. They were able to do some very creative things with PHP that I know they didn't have the coding skills to do otherwise. Like grabbing random images based on keyword searches from poems and creating montages with them. The industrial programmers would shudder in horror at the PHP code they wrote but it did the job. PHP is for the people. It'd be nice if the bureaucratic programmers would keep on making their proper factory factory singletons they learned at University without turning up their noses at PHP in their boxed world
It starts as the ultimate anti-structure. Nothing, not even MVC. But then you can refactor parts out of it and start moving towards a structure. Very freeing if it's a small one-off page/project and you know what structure works for you.
(Of course, if you need a database and authentication and Scaling and so forth, that's when you start bringing in the heavy artillery (libraries and packages), or switch to a framework.)