I'll definitely edit the post adding the relevant bits you mentioned.
Two special notes:
About 1. stdClass, you're right and I don't know why I just took it for granted without even testing. My Bad.
About 3. casting special types, you're right again. I didn't phrase it properly. Casting null to other types won't yield errors and casting resources too. Their values are normally nothing we should rely on, but doesn't mean one "can't" perform such casts.
Thanks a lot for your comments, they are incredibly helpful!
Cheers!
From what I understand it is simply not useful to expect Bootcampers to have such knowledge. These courses are made to spit people out to the easiest part of the market: start ups and other (small) businesses willing to pay little and receive a lot.
Learning PHP, Python or Java for back-end development is ineffective for Bootcamp courses and bootcampers. They require you to understand programming instead of programming languages, for a quick and functional delivery.
IMHO: It is the role of such companies hiring these people to actually teach them how the "real world" looks like and shape them accordingly.
I believe this question is not quite accurate. Node is happening in the real world, yes. But often companies with a couple of years in the market would have a different stack that isn't that hyped like JavaScript stuff.
They require actual programming skills, not programming language skills. And this I think is the most important part. I'm just not sure if we could ask this from Bootcampers, since their learning process is just sufficient to spit them out to the market.
