Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

Those quotes aren't surprising. Someone with the attitude shown in those quotes would create a language exactly like PHP. And that language would be hated by most of the people who actually enjoy coding.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#6

Post by kgrin » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 4:45 AM UTC

To be fair, some ("I still am really bad at writing parsers.") seem to be more signs of humility than confessions of incompetence.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#7

Post by thejo » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 4:53 AM UTC

He's always been pretty open about his "just get the job done" approach. That's exactly what PHP is too. Not beautiful, well designed etc., but gets the job done in most cases.

This is a mail he showed at a talk - http://lerdorf.com/fanmail.txt

I'm sure he enjoys it when people get worked up about PHP :)

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#8

Post by Asa-Nisse » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 4:57 AM UTC

This makes me love PHP more. If that was possible.

He just gets it. If you want to spend your days drawing UML, writing documentation and unit tests. That is dandy, but you're in PHPLand now. This is our land, and we dont care about no freakin' memory leaks.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#9

Post by randallsquared » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 5:02 AM UTC

thejo wrote: post #7

He's always been pretty open about his "just get the job done" approach. That's exactly what PHP is too. Not beautiful, well designed etc., but gets the job done in most cases. This is a mail he showed at a talk - http://lerdorf.com/fanmail.txt I'm sure he enjoys it when people get worked up about PHP :)

That email is confusing. "From: damien taylor" in 2003 yet signed "Walter Bagdasarian", which unusual-seeming name belongs to a guy who was convicted in 2009 of threatening Obama. Odd.

Re: Some surprising quotes from Rasmus Lerdorf (php creator)

#10

Post by nir » Mon, Jan 11, 2010, 5:07 AM UTC

Rasmus Lerdorf created the most popular language for building web apps. Websites that changed the world were built with this language, and most newcomers seem to choose it as well. It managed to get a substantial share of a market that companies like Microsoft or Sun put huge resources into.

On top of all that, he actually remains a pretty cool and down to earth guy, as far as I can tell from reading his online stuff and hearing him speak a few times, which makes the snarky comments here seem even more juvenile.