Its not just PHP, or even just software and digital infrastructure. Most average people would be appalled to get a look behind the curtain of how a great many things they depend on every day are operated once it is not sexy anymore and just fades into the background of the machinery that keeps the lights on and their lives going.
Many industries are this way, people don't seem to realize it's only in some cases two or three people in an entire region that are keeping some key peice of equipment going. Like shit even our infrastructure is that now, we used to have people on site everywhere monitoring but now so much is just a guy in an office doing the work of 50 people.
There's a whole ass XKCD someone's no doubt posted somewhere in this thread....
You do not want to see how the sausage gets made
I always have this at the back of my mind
Why didn't we have a meme with these wobbly piles of blocks representing the internet structure having one tiny pillar identified as PHP yet ?
Exactly, many thanks 👍 !
Is the director the only staff member? Does he want a raise?
“We have one full-time staff member (that's me) and 14 mostly part-time contractors,” Executive Director Elizabeth Barron of the PHP Foundation said via email in an interview on Friday. Board members are unpaid volunteers, and funding comes from donations and grants.
Sounds more like she is stretched thin, and pointing out how unsustainable the current model is. Only one person dedicated to maintaining a programming language that ~70% of the internet uses is the perfect example of that xkcd “all modern infrastructure, vs one obscure person who has thanklessly been maintaining a project since 1997” meme.
Yes I understand, I should have added a /s to that comment. I even have a version of that cartoon above my desk.
Why would you add the /s? We got so much more info from a misunderstanding!
It is called personal homepage so it makes sense there is only one person.
who in the hell writes in notepad?
I have a few PHP scripts that I maintain. I use Notepad++ like a normal person, though.
like a normal person
Well we might disagree on whether using Windows in 2026 is normal...
It's for work, it's not up to me.
Hey, we can't all afford syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting? In this economy?
one who programs in PHP, apparently, but not all PHP programmers use notepad , some use nano and others ed. /jk
I'm sick of these stereotypes. Joke's on you, I write everything in vim.
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