How to improve your skills as a php programmer?

Question

PHP

I've been learning PHP on my own since I was 16 (I'm 22 now). Studied "anyhow" through the search. There were 2 large self-written projects. Made not even by MVC.
Now I work as a web-programmer in a company, I write a real estate portal on Symfony 2.7 (we launch after NG), but I still don’t feel confident working with code, I often have to google, and I rely heavily on the phpstorm IDE - I often get lost in the names of functions . Please advise how to gain confident knowledge so that I can easily write even in notepad thinking only about the application logic, and not remembering exactly which functions I need.

Answer 1

Made not even by MVC.

I can reveal a terrible secret - most people do this, even if they call it MVC.
Well, that's what IDEs are for. In order not to remember what order of arguments a particular function has, all sorts of auto-completions, etc. Even people who use VIM etc. they set up autocomplete servers for themselves and use all this not because PhpStorm corrupts, but because PhpStorm already presses for them (too smart, does too much and that's why it's slow).
Confident knowledge lies in understanding what you are doing. Memorizing the API is stupid, today it is one thing - tomorrow it is another. You only need to remember that there is something like that and be able to compose search queries. What you use every day will stick in your memory.

Answer 2

I write code in Far (code highlighting editor) and use keyboard macros.
You can start throwing tomatoes at me)
In order not to remember:
1. Write more often without a prompter / function hint.
2. Make your own classes for common tasks and use them.
3. Architecture BEFORE coding.

Answer 3

I was in a similar situation, and I learned most of the functions I needed in my daily work (Without using an IDE). Just when you go online to look at the arguments of a function or something else, start memorizing them, spend an additional 5-10 minutes, and after 2-3 such views, the need for them will disappear (of course, it also depends on how you can remember the information). Also use the IDE with hints, with the IDE you don't even have to memorize the whole name, but literally the first 2-3 letters of the function/constant name. I think otherwise, repetition is the mother of learning :)