Matthew Setter, a self-taught PHP developer, recounts his journey from working with Visual Basic applications to becoming a technical content expert. He initially took on the project of learning PHP by default after none of the older engineers were interested in it. Through experimentation and learning, he discovered a passion for the language's flexibility and forgiving nature. Setter transitioned into writing technical articles and became a regular contributor to several blogs and magazines, eventually landing a role at Twilio where he now creates content as a PHP Software Engineer of Technical Content.