Rasmus Lerdorf
Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish programmer renowned for creating the PHP scripting language in the mid-1990s. Originally developed to manage his personal web page, PHP has since evolved into one of the most widely used scripting languages, powering millions of websites and popular platforms, including WordPress. Born on November 22, 1968, in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland, Lerdorf moved to Canada with his family and later earned a degree in applied science from the University of Waterloo. He began developing PHP in 1994, releasing the first implementation, PHP/FI, in 1995, which aimed to simplify the creation of dynamic web applications.
Throughout his career, Lerdorf has held various roles in internet infrastructure, including significant positions at Yahoo! and contributions to the Apache HTTP Server and MySQL database. He is recognized not only for his technical work but also for his advocacy of open source software. Lerdorf identifies as a problem solver rather than a traditional programmer, and he actively engages with the tech community through social media and personal projects. His contributions have greatly influenced the landscape of web development, marking him as a key figure in the evolution of internet technologies.
Subject Terms
Rasmus Lerdorf
Creator of the PHP scripting language
- Born: November 22, 1968
- Place of Birth: Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland
Primary Company/Organization: PHP Group
Introduction
Danish programmer Rasmus Lerdorf developed the PHP scripting language in the mid-1990s. Originally developed as a set of tools to help him maintain his own web page, PHP quickly grew to become one of the most popular scripting languages, used in millions of websites and incorporated into popular platforms such as WordPress. His later work included contributions to the MySQL database management program and the Apache HTTP Server.
Early Life
Rasmus Lerdorf was born on November 22, 1968, in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland, an autonomous country within Denmark. As a child, he immigrated with his family to Canada. He attended King City Secondary School in Ontario, graduating in 1988 and enrolling in Ontario's University of Waterloo, where he earned a bachelor's degree in applied science (with a focus on systems design engineering) in 1993.
Life's Work
In 1994, a year after he had left college, when graphical web browsers were still new—Mosaic had been introduced the previous year, and Internet Explorer was still a year from release—Lerdorf developed a series of scripts in the dynamic programming language Perl to help him maintain his web page. After a year of tinkering, he released these scripts to the public as PHP (which stood for “personal home page” tools). His original scripts had been written to automate tasks on his website such as displaying his résumé (without having to reenter information to the web page manually after updating his resume) and monitoring visitor traffic. Generalizing from these tasks, he developed a scripting language with more flexible options, written in the programming language C as Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries, with Perl-like syntax and the ability to build basic dynamic web applications. He announced the availability of PHP on the Usenet group comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi on June 8, 1995.
The first implementation was PHP/FI: Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter, which included variables similar to Perl's and the ability to embed HTML and handle forms. His hope was to build small, simple web applications in order to create more interesting, useful, and interactive web pages rather than pages that were little more than formatted text arranged with images. It is worth noting that PHP was developed in the same year as the earliest version of Flash (then called FutureSplash Animator) and the public release of Java. The combination of the three has much to do with the significant differences between the look and feel of even the most basic web page in 2012 compared to 1995.
At the time that he developed PHP, Lerdorf was working as an information technology consultant in Toronto, which he continued to do through 1999. After the development of PHP, Lerdorf worked in various jobs related to Internet infrastructure, including a long stint at Yahoo! (2002–09) as an infrastructure architecture engineer. He had previously worked for IBM (1999–2000), developing internal IBM products and Apache 2.0 architecture, and Linuxcare (2000–01), handling large-scale application architecture. He made contributions both to the Apache HTTP server and to the MySQL database management program. He advised sites such as Etsy, Room77, WePay, and MySQL and served on the Apache Software Foundation board of directors. He has also published books on PHP for O'Reilly Media.
After Yahoo!, Lerdorf went on to spent a year as a developer at the online payment platform WePay and then worked as a distinguished engineer for Etsy beginning in 2012. He still held this position as of 2024.
Personal Life
Lerdorf is active on the Internet, maintaining accounts on both Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr, as well as a personal website. He is also an avid soccer fan and open source advocate. He has pointed out on numerous occasions that he does not think of himself as a programmer, nor does he believe that he should be considered a good one; rather, he is a problem solver, and on occasion, programming has been the tool he has used to solve problems.
Bibliography
Lerdorf, Rasmus, Kevin Tatroe, and Peter MacIntyre. Programming PHP. Sebastopol: O'Reilly, 2006. Print.
MacIntyre, Peter. PHP: The Good Parts. Sebastopol: O'Reilly, 2010. Print.
Meggs, Philip B., and Alston W. Purvis. Meggs' History of Graphic Design. New York: Wiley, 2011. Print.