Yes, this is why PHP is easy for beginners. The standard practice is to edit directly on the server. It's a hard habit for a lot of PHP devs to break. It's very straightforward and direct: Edit a file, hit reload, see the result live.
Something like, e.g., Heroku is awesome, yes, but not only do you need to learn how to debug a thing which you can't really touch in production, not only do you have to master the distinction between "the file I just edited here" and "the file on the remote machine"… but you have to use Git for that. I love Git, but years of watching PHP devs try to figure out Git have taught me just how intuitive it isn't.
Something like, e.g., Heroku is awesome, yes, but not only do you need to learn how to debug a thing which you can't really touch in production, not only do you have to master the distinction between "the file I just edited here" and "the file on the remote machine"… but you have to use Git for that. I love Git, but years of watching PHP devs try to figure out Git have taught me just how intuitive it isn't.