Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with rejecting the elitist framing but … the web was decidedly not mostly static before PHP came along. Perl had many frameworks (e.g. PHP started as one), as did conventional languages like Java, Python, with deep server integration possible using things like mod_perl. There were also a bunch of web-specific dynamic platforms like Cold Fusion and classic ASP / me-too JSP. Finally, there was server-side JavaScript as one of Netscape's offerings in the mid-90s.

What PHP added was primarily ease of use with the ability to deploy code simply by creating a single file, suitable for mass deployment at ISPs in the era where everyone used shared servers, and the combination of comparative ease of use with enough performance to do serious projects. Cold Fusion was also easy but didn't support things like persistent connections (read: order of magnitude slower) and the core language was very, very slow and also quite limited and buggy. You could find much faster options if you wanted to build, debug and deploy a conventional language like C++ or Java but the cost and risk was so much higher that this was unfavorable unless you really needed performance.

EDIT: if you want a snapshot of what the 90s web was like, http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/ was quite popular in the day. I know at least one well-known business which still has a revenue-generating website built in TCL, too…

PHP was easily one of the first to get some mainstream traction. I was using it in February '96, perhaps earlier. Classic ASP from MS was released in Dec 96, and didn't start making inroads (from my vantage point) until mid '97. I was stuck in '97 doing some odd front page weirdness (htc files? can't recall now) which were extremely limiting. At night, I'd go home and do PHP, and had an ecommerce system (horrible as it was) running on PHP/FI (php v2, essentially) in 1998.

By '97/'98 there were multiple vendors vying in this space - htmlos and ihtml are two names that stick with me, but there are some others I remember but can't recall names. And ColdFusion and whatnot, but... Perl and PHP were the big freebies, even by '97. ASP had speed on its side, but PHP already had convenience and price by '97, and it's gained ever since then. re: Java as server-side web platform - was outside my radar much, but the majority of people I worked with, even Java enthusiasts, didn't give it much credence before '99 - I don't think the infrastructure support was quite settled, and it was too 'wild west' for my colleagues (bunch of other reasons too). (IIRC, CF didn't support user-defined functions for several years, leading to much more difficult to maintain code than it should have been, but... memory gets hazy after 18 years).

But... PHP and Perl were free and largely "good enough" for enough of the problems most people were facing which is why they gained as much foothold as they did. ASP and CF both required a fairly hefty outlay and setup that you generally wouldn't be able to pay for without working in a corporate gig.

I definitely remember that era as the age of Perl but I should note that my first database-driven web app was in 1996, using a beta Java servlet runner with DB/2 on OS/2.

I'm happy to report that I got better at making technology choices.

I stand partly corrected. I only knew for certain servlet spec 2 was out in 99, and had not known anyone doing Java web serving stuff. I had colleagues doing java, and I worked in a commercial web house with those same colleagues, but none seemed to consider java web stuff (server side) usable (again memory's a bit hazy). I do know by 2000 some jumped in to servlets big time, but not many before that.

I think my first was perl/cgi in Jan 96 - not a full "web app" but I could read and write data via web forms to a database (msql IIRC). Feb 96 I know I was doing some PHP/FI, though still did a lot of Perl for years, mostly because that's what most hosts supported. For my own stuff, it was generally PHP even then when I had a choice.

If you were a corporate/academic programmer at the time, or lucky enthusiast, you had access to more things. Most commoner folk stepping up to a local ISP shell from BBS did not have access to all kinds of goodies. There also was less formal education available, so even when technologies existed, without mainstream marketing and documentation, it simply wasn't accessible to the masses. Cold Fusion was proprietary software from Macromedia you had to pay for, as I recall. Some admins were restrictive, and didn't even like you compiling your own stuff.

PHP really was responsible for the dynamic web. It had enough community support to enable newbies to wrap their head around the mind-boggling shift to dynamic server-side websites, and it became commonly provided with cheap or free shared hosting.

A big reason why it succeeded was because it was possible for people who only understood HTML to transition, since a PHP file could be nothing but HTML to start with, and people used a lot of templating rather than start from scratch with code that echoed out HTML. With things like Perl, it was not an HTML templating script first, and so that made it less streamlined and simple for the task of making websites.

Again, PHP made it better and easier but you aren't going to convince me that my direct experience didn't exist simply by repeating the same assertion.

Before PHP became widespread in the very late 90s there were many options for dynamic apps. I worked with ISPs which offered CGI or SSI even on cheap / free plans. Sure, it was ugly but a ton of people got what they needed done by going over to Matt's Script Archive and finding something they could hammer into shape. Before antique PHP apps, the security cliché was formmail.pl & a slew of long-forgotten guestbook / forum scripts.

I'm not saying that PHP didn't help considerably, only that it was very far from first. I remember having to make the case for using PHP 2 or 3 instead of many of those alternatives and it was based on cost and convenience, not the ability to do anything new.

I didn't say first, I said responsible, and first doesn't really matter. Albert Einstein's e=mc^2 wasn't first, it was already published by someone else written slightly differently. But he made it popular, and that's what counts for widespread adoption and propagation of tech.

You sound like an older hardcore nerd. You're from a different planet. What was going on in your circles was not at all a reflection of the web on a whole. Most people didn't even use ISPs in those times, they were on private systems like AOL. The dynamic web we know today, where almost every website is not static HTML, is because the majority of people making any little website had access to PHP, and free tutorials to learn.

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