PHP supports almost any style of programming depending on the framework you choose. And that's sometimes a problem and as a consequence is 'that PHP developers often tend to have more of a "quick-and-dirty" mindset and don't really appreciate that kind of code'.

I guess you have tried Symfony, haven't you?

I tried Symfony, which I liked a lot, and I wrote code in a similar way as I would have for ASP.NET, which I thought seemed logical considering how similar they were. And then my colleagues complained that my code was too complicated and they didn't like all the type declarations when you could just easily return untyped arrays everywhere. I don't work in PHP anymore.

There are 11000/25 = 440 'new-way' accepted groups in, а lot of us want to be advised. :)

The lesson zero: just give it a try and some kind of success you get in any way :)

So, can you explain, what is the main difference between 'new-way'-accepted participants and people who even did not apply to Startup School and will be able to watch the videos also?