Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 176 posts

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#31

Post by iammiles »

101008 wrote: post #25
alberth wrote: post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

Definitely. I started with PHP when I was only 12 or 13 years old. Adding some logic inside your .html files (mostly includes, that were like magic back then[1]), renaming to .php and upload them to the server using FTP was so simple. A few years later, when I had to set up a lot of things to run Django I was surprised at how hard it was. PHP was simple to use, and to understand its logic, because it was embeded into…

This is the same story for me. Moving from PHP to Python was really difficult conceptually for me. For years fiddling with Apache configs and uploading files via FTP was web development.

I sometimes find myself thinking about teenagers getting started nowadays and the accessibility of development, but I suppose there are a lot more resources now than the early 2000s for some enterprising kids to get started.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#32

Post by carabiner »

oscargrouch wrote: post #22
hitekker wrote: post #3

> This may sound a little foreign to all you folks coming from a non-Unix background, but PHP doesn't cost anything. You can use it for commercial and/or non-commercial use all you want. You can give it to your friends, print it out and hang it on your wall or eat it for lunch. Welcome to the world of Open Source software! Smile, be happy, the world is good. For the full legalese, see the official license. What a nic…

I guess you are lacking some context. Back in the day, you could: * Be bold enough to use Linux or FreeBSD and use CGI or Perl as the only free version * Use ASP but pay license fees for Windows NT, ISS and SQL Server * Use ColdFusion which was kind of trendy but was pretty expensive. When PHP arrived it was so refreshing. I used to make my stuff in Apache+PHP, MySQL and Linux and it was magical what you could do wit…

I remember my employer was paying Indian consultants a fortune to build a web app in ASP that didn't work. I told them I could do it in PHP in a week, but they didn't trust some "free program."

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#33

Post by asadlionpk »

alberth wrote: post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

Try nextjs.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#34

Post by sam_lowry_ »

dspillett wrote: post #30
alberth wrote: post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

It basically did for simple web programming what visual basic did for Windows desktop toys: allowed you to throw some UI together (drag & drop components in the VB case, any old HTML with links or forms for PHP) then start stringing bit of code in haphazardly to link it together. No need to learn a more complex compiler or other build tools, worry about configuring CGI or other web server tech (unless running PHP you…

>Foreign keys? Let the business layer worry about rules like that!

Rails made this approach viable at the time.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#35

Post by liyanage »

That brings back fond memories. I used to package up a PHP installer (and a MySQL one) for macOS for many years, back when OS X was still new and it was a bit of work to build various UNIX open source projects from source.

My day job was Solaris/Linux work so I was used to it and I wanted PHP on my Mac, so I built the installer for myself and also put it on my website, where more and more people downloaded it from over the years.

I haven't used PHP in more than ten years and only recently started dabbling with web development again for fun. I am very happy with TypeScript + React on the client side and Python or Swift on the server side.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#36

Post by showerst »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #34
dspillett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It basically did for simple web programming what visual basic did for Windows desktop toys: allowed you to throw some UI together (drag & drop components in the VB case, any old HTML with links or forms for PHP) then start stringing bit of code in haphazardly to link it together. No need to learn a more complex compiler or other build tools, worry about configuring CGI or other web server tech (unless running PHP you…

>Foreign keys? Let the business layer worry about rules like that! Rails made this approach viable at the time.

> Rails made this approach viable at the time.

Rails didn't get big until 2006, eight years later than this time period =).

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#37

Post by n0mad01 »

simonw wrote: post #9

"PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor was chosen as the official meaning of the PHP acronym with 53% of the votes." For anyone curious I tallied the votes from the linked page: 57 PHP HTML Preprocessor 29 PHP Hypermedia Preprocessor 98 PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

i guess "Personal Home Page" didnt sound sophisticated enough.

Re: PHP 3.0 Final is out (1998)

#38

Post by systematical »

alberth wrote: post #11

It’s hard to explain just how much easier PHP made creating a dynamic web site back in the 90s / early 00s. You drop a file in your public web server folder and you’re done. Prior was CGI Perl scripts that hacked together how to access session and rest data. Or you had to develop in C. PHP had native support for the web. It also eliminate the need for an app server. I’m still not certain even today, if anything exist…

And today you get all that plus a lot of features you'd expect in other languages. Starting with PHP 7 the language has gotten faster and better and it continues into PHP 8. Just checkout of the RFC's https://wiki.php.net/rfc
Post reply on HN