While I can't empathize with you because I am a programmer, I feel like PHP isn't a great language to start on simply due to the fact that you have to coordinate a lot of non-programming things (servers, remote editing, HTML/CSS, etc.). I think you'd be more successful starting with Python or something else with a REPL.

PHP might be easier to learn on now than it was for me 8 years ago, I don't really know.