Today is a very personal day that is deeply connected with the programming language thatI use most – I could even say “love”.
On this day 30 years ago a certain Rasmus Lerdorf made his Personal HomePage tools publicly available. The birth of a language that should change the WorldWideWeb – conincidentally invented by a person that celebrates their birthday on exactly this day!
In these last 30 days PHP has become the programming language powering the majority of public websites – ask 3 different surveys and you’ll probably get 4 different percentage values. But all of them state that PHP is the by far most used language.
PHP has reduced the entry barrier for (web) development significantly which is probably one of the most underrated things that PHP did for programming in those last 30 years.
And due to that a lot of people started programming and were able to throw together something that worked. A lot of those people in the early days had probably not a background in programming. They did a lot of things… differently. Probably even wrong. Which also led to a lot of security issues. Which is why to this day PHP has a bad reputation of being slow and insecure and is by a lot of people not considered a “real” programming language.
And so for 30 years now people are regularly referring to PHP as a “dead language”. But well… a creaking door hangs longest…
One of the things that also developed in these 30 years is a vivid community around the language.
I first came into contact with it in form of a mailing list in 2001. And little did I know where that would lead me.
It allowed me to learn programming – first by asking questions – soon realizing that I was even able to answer some of the questions. Which allowed me to dive deeper into programming in my first real job. Which brought me into contact with more and more people from the local community. It even introduced me to my local usergroup around 2011.
And from that point on there was no turning back. I was thrown into co-organizing our local usergroup. And I realized that it would be really awesome to be able to visit other usergroups. But there wasn’t a list of other usergroups. So … I had to scratch my itch and build a list, hadn’t I?
And gosh that exploded…
It brought me into contact with so many more amazing people and opened doors that I am absolutely grateful for! It even caused me to submit a talk to a conference because a fried I made via the usergroup-organizer chat thought I should. So in 2015 I got accepted and spoke for the very first time at a PHP conference. And suddenly I stood there beneath all those big names in the PHP-community – and it turned out they were mere mortals and we had a great time!
But – and here the sad part starts – 2015 was the year that my better half got diagnosed with cancer. And due to her chemotherapy (and a change in it that required a weekly dosage) she wasn’t able to join me in this experience.
She went through it and everything was fine again.
Until on this day 5 years ago. On the 8th of June. We got the diagnose that the bastard was back again!
And when I publicly wrote about it, the PHP community did again the for me unexpected. The wave of support that hit me was overwhelming. I still sometimes have trouble understanding it! But you are all amazing!
So celebrating 30 years of PHP for me is so much more than celebrating the birth of a programming language.
It is celebrating the birth of a community that carried the Personal Homepage Tools of some quirky greenland-born guy to one of the cornerstones of the WorldWideWeb and beyond.
It is celebrating a Community that has supported me in so many ways that I can’t describe.
It is celebrating a community that connects people from all over the world in a family-kind of way (Yes that also includes the odd uncle that will always pop up somewhere).
And personally I celebrate a community that has carried and supported me through 10 years of every now and then tough times. And that has brought me a lot of friendships that I do not want to miss!
Thank you Rasmus for sparking this!