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PHP a quarter of a century old

June 10, 2020.

PHP 25th Anniversary.

© iStock/Spiria.

On June 8 1995, on a Usenet discussion group, Rasmus Lerdorf announced the birth of version 1.0 of a suite of CGI programs written in C, called “Personal Home Page Tools” (PHP Tools). Its functionalities were basic: track Web site visitors in real-time, display visit counters, password-protect Web site pages and simplify the creation of forms. Lerdorf originally developed the tools to see how many people looked at his CV on his personal Web site. Since these modest beginnings, PHP has grown and gained many more functionalities, but in a chaotic way. Today, PHP is mature and reliable and most Web sites and applications use it, usually through a LAMP stack. Version 8 of PHP, to be released at the end of the year, promises significant performance gains, thanks to Just-in-Time compilation. Happy birthday, PHP!

YouTube, “Rasmus Lerdorf – 25 years of PHP.”

Codemotion Magazine, Vito Gentile, “25 years of PHP: history and curiosities by Rasmus Lerdorf.”

SD Times, Jenna Sargent, “PHP celebrates 25 years and works toward version 8.0 of the language.”