Ben Ramsey shared how he got started with PHP and had the great idea of asking others to write about their stories and tagging it as #20yearsofphp. This is my story.
When I graduated from college in 2000, I began looking for a job without a clear idea of what I wanted to do. In grad school I had done some projects using HTML, ASP, and ShockWave for various professors and figured I could get a job building web sites until I decided on something. I replied to a job posting (I think it was on hotjobs.com) and in September 2000 I started working as a web developer at Forum One. Thanks to that job, I spent a week working in San Francisco after meeting my (future) wife on a previous trip to California. We’d get married in 2004.
At the time, PHP4 had just been released. I worked on projects which still used PHP3, or interfaced via Perl CGI scripts to save data in a custom-build in-house CMS. I think my first actual PHP project was for a local Jewish Temple. Like other junior devs at that job, I took a shot at replacing the Perl scripts with my own PHP versions. Luckily, I never inflicted them on my colleagues.
From there, PHP was a gateway to learning about Linux, web servers, databases & SQL, and so much more. Thanks to PHP (and Drupal) I worked for my favorite soccer team, D.C. United. Today I’m grateful that, through running php[architect] I get to work not only with Eli, Kevin, Sandy, and Heather on daily basis but also with the wider PHP community through php[architect]’s magazine, books, and conferences.
I don’t think I could have planned the last 15 years better. Here’s to the next 20!