I worked with PHP XX years ago, and we didn't have that problem. I think that once you have access to a machine, it will always be possible to make direct changes. It's just that PHP made it easier, and in some cases it was also acceptable that the prod environment was temporarily broken until the developer undid their changes. You would just mess up a single page (or route).
Example 1:
I developed internal tools on a single server. The way I would do it was to have a personal folder on the server that I could use for development. Then I would commit the files to CVS which was the used for "deployment" to the main "production" folder. This worked well for me.
Example 2:
We also had a customer facing website where this practice was not allowed. We had proper build pipelines that created RPM packages which was installed by hand on the production machines.
My point is that there were many ways of avoiding editing the files directly in "production", even back when PHP ruled the world.
“The problem didn’t happen to me” doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t occur. It’s like speeding.
PS: I saw a developer take out an 80K user enterprise because they tried to change the look and feel of a login page live on the prod server. They didn’t know any better because they were used to editing pages in live systems. That bad habit resulted in about a million dollars of lost work.
Example 1:
I developed internal tools on a single server. The way I would do it was to have a personal folder on the server that I could use for development. Then I would commit the files to CVS which was the used for "deployment" to the main "production" folder. This worked well for me.
Example 2:
We also had a customer facing website where this practice was not allowed. We had proper build pipelines that created RPM packages which was installed by hand on the production machines.
My point is that there were many ways of avoiding editing the files directly in "production", even back when PHP ruled the world.