What are the potential pitfalls of not understanding HTML before diving into PHP development?

Not understanding HTML before diving into PHP development can lead to difficulties in creating dynamic web pages and integrating PHP code with HTML markup. It can result in messy and inefficient code that is hard to maintain and debug. To avoid these pitfalls, it is important to have a solid understanding of HTML basics such as tags, attributes, and structure before starting PHP development.

<?php
// Example of integrating PHP code with HTML markup
$name = "John Doe";
?>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>PHP HTML Example</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Hello, <?php echo $name; ?></h1>
</body>
</html>