Gazing into the Mirror of ‘self’ for Code Clarity This is how most books are built. Let’s use some keywords without explaining it to you previously. I was caught in that trap as well. We looked at the self keyword in the last couple of articles without actually going into detail as to what it means. https://www.dinocajic.com/php-static-keyword/ For static class members, we don’t use the $this keyword, we use self. That and the scope resolution operator allows us to access the static properties and methods. The self keyword does not require a dollar sign in front of it, unlike the $this keyword. The $ is pushed towards the static property, self::$property,