To celebrate the birthday, Ben Ramsey shared a really cool timeline of tweets with all the big events over the years. He also a wrote an article for infoworld on PHP’s history.
PHP didn’t start out as a language, and this is clear from its design — or lack thereof, as detractors point out. It began as an API to help Web developers access lower-level C libraries. The first version was a small CGI binary that provided form-processing functionality with access to request parameters and the mSQL database. And its facility with a Web app’s database would prove key in sparking our interest in PHP and PHP’s subsequent ascendancy.
I will forever remember creating my first sites like this in the PHP 3.x days:
1<?php include('header.php'); ?>2<?php $sql = "select * from posts where id = $_GET['id']"; ?>3//..4<?php include('footer.php'); ?>
Yes, that’s bad. Don’t ever do that. :) The language has changed a lot since then, and thanks to the community the tips and tutorials have also vastly improved.
Here’s to 20 more!
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