Tbh, all of web development has become this... efficient. I remember the days where I could create a website in PHP and have it done in a couple of hours (per page), and now the only way I can do that would be using AI and going full on "vibe coding" mode.
What do you mean? You can just make some react/typescript template and fastapi server thing, or any of dozens of equivalents, extremely quickly. I'm by no means an expert on web stuff as I develop software for controlling machines, but we used the above for some internal services in my last job and I could get a clean and functional site running in a day with no prior experience. I get that for public facing stuff you'll have some higher requirements but I couldn't imagine those wouldn't apply just because you're coding in PHP...
For me, Docker has been amazing. It’s probably my single most favorite tool in my tool belt. It has made my life so much easier over the years. It’s far from hell for me! 🐳
At my previous job, we had a "Devops" team. We even outsourced some ops to a third party in the worst possible way (I'm talking "oh you want to set up an alert for something related to your service? Send us an email and we'll look into it" and so on). All the pre-devops pain magnified by an order of magnitude. Sometimes devs would do their own ops (I know, big shock!), and they would call it "shadow devops". Nearly fell off my chair when I first heard it. Kinda glad I'm not with them anymore.