20 years ago this week, Rasmus Lerdorf released “Personal Home Page Tools” to the public. Shortened as “PHP Tools”, this would eventually become PHP-- the open source programming language that’s behind millions of web sites, including some of the most popular sites online.
Vector’s development team uses a lot of languages and tools but PHP is an especially important one. It’s where many of us (including me!) got our programming start, and it’s what a majority of our projects are in.
I asked some of our developers to share a sentence or two with their thoughts about #20yearsofphp. Here’s what they said:
Joe Ferguson:
Started using PHP mid 1999. My own sites + hacking at others' code. Changed my career path, probably my life as well #20yearsofphp #memtech
— Joe P Ferguson (@JoePFerguson) June 8, 2015
Al Auad:
Hardcoding menus in 200 html pages wasn’t good! Thankfully I discovered PHP and the amazing include(); (in mid 99!)
Khaliq Gant:
Picked up PHP to build a website idea I had. I thought about trying to have someone else build it, but then decided to just learn and do it myself - haven't stopped learning since.
Rene Merino:
PHP is used to run 81.9% of the web... not bad for and old (internet years) language... #20yearsofphp
— Rene Merino (@ReneMerino) June 8, 2015
Steve Mercatante:
I started writing PHP in 2001 to make my existing sites dynamic. Fourteen years later, I'm proud to have worked on many interesting and challenging projects, and to have met some great people along the way.
Rod McTainsh:
To PHP on your Birthday - Just like good booze (and the occasional web developer), you've improved nicely with age!
Ben Smith:
Picked up PHP after I finished going through the code exercises in "ASP For Dummies, 3rd Edition" I was 13 years old #20yearsofphp
— ben (@abenjaminsmith) June 9, 2015
Sam Hernandez:
PHP 4.2, a Dell laptop, and a little curiosity turned into a fantastic addiction that changed the course of my life.
Luke Wilkins:
Began playing with PHP in 2000 after realizing I needed to store data in a database. 15 years later, and PHP has guided my entire career.
Rob Sanchez:
I took an "Intro to PHP" course at a community college in 2007 for fun. Years later, I have that one class to thank for a career trajectory that continues today.
Arthur Ward:
Back in the 4.x days I started poking around with the idea of a website since web hosting seemed cheap enough to mess around with. The majority of the web software I used at the time was PHP based which definitely influenced me in deciding to learn it. Glad I did. Was easy to get started with, easy to use, and since then it and the web it powers has improved significantly.
Brent Wilson:
I started using PHP for fun around 2000 after realizing SSI had serious limitations and discovering that Perl wasn't for me. Things really took off when I discovered pMachine a couple years later. That hobby tool eventually built my career.