Rasmus Lerdorf (born 22 November 1968) is a Danish-Canadian

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

. He co-authored and inspired the

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

scripting language, authoring the first two versions of the language and participating in the development of later versions led by a group of developers including Jim Winstead (who later created

blo.gs Automattic Inc. is an American global distributed company which was founded in August 2005 and is most notable for WordPress.com (a freemium blogging service), as well as its contributions to WordPress (an open source blogging software). The co ...

), Stig Bakken, Shane Caraveo,

Andi Gutmans Andi (Andrei) Gutmans is an Israeli programmer and entrepreneur. Biography Andi Gutmans holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Technion in Haifa. Gutmans holds four citizenships: Swiss, British, Israeli and American. Business ...

, and

Zeev Suraski Zeev Suraski ( he, זאב סורסקי ) is an Israeli programmer, PHP developer and co-founder of Zend Technologies. A graduate of the Technion in Haifa, Israel, Suraski and Andi Gutmans created PHP 3 in 1997. In 1999 they wrote the Zend En ...

. He continues to contribute to the project.

Early life and education

Lerdorf was born on

Disko Island Disko Island ( kl, Qeqertarsuaq, da, Diskoøen) is a large island in Baffin Bay, off the west coast of Greenland. It has an area of ,King City, Ontario King City is an unincorporated Canadian community in the township of King, Ontario, located north of Toronto. It is the largest community in King township, with 2,730 dwellings and a population of 8,396 as of the 2021 Canadian census. History ...

in 1983. He graduated from

King City Secondary School King City Secondary School, or KCSS, is a secondary education facility in King City, Ontario, Canada. It is a secular public school administered by the York Region District School Board. The school is located at 2001 King Road, and the current pri ...

in 1988, and in 1993 he graduated from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

with a

Bachelor of Applied Science The Bachelor of Applied Science, often abbreviated as B.AS., BAS, BSAS, BASc, B.A.Sc., or BAppSc, is an undergraduate degree. There are also ''Bachelor of Arts and Science'' and ''Bachelor of Administration Science'' undergraduate degrees, also a ...

in Systems Design Engineering. He contributed to the

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server software, released under the terms of Apache License 2.0. Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache So ...

and he added the LIMIT clause to the mSQL DBMS. A variant of this LIMIT clause had already been around for a decade in mainframe relational database management systems (like

Oracle Rdb Oracle Rdb is a relational database management system for the OpenVMS operating system. It was originally released by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1984 as VAX Rdb/VMS. Product history Rdb was a component of the ''VAX Information Arch ...

running on

VMS #REDIRECT VMS {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...

, formerly from

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

), but apparently it had not yet been picked up by the emerging PC-based databases. It was later adapted by several other SQL-compatible DBMS. He released the first version of PHP in 1995.

Career

From September 2002 to November 2009 Lerdorf was employed by Yahoo! Inc. as an Infrastructure Architecture Engineer. In 2010, he joined

WePay WePay is an online payment service provider based in the United States. It provides an integrated and customizable payment solution, through its APIs, to platform businesses such as crowdfunding sites, marketplaces and small business software co ...

in order to develop their

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

. Throughout 2011 he was a roving consultant for startups. On 22 February 2012 he announced on Twitter that he had joined

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft su ...

. In July 2013 Lerdorf joined

Jelastic Jelastic is a cloud platform software vendor that provides multi-cloud Platform as a Service-based on container technology for hosting service providers, ISVs, telecommunication companies, enterprises and developers. The platform is available as ...

as a senior advisor to help them with the creation of new technology. Lerdorf is a frequent speaker at Open Source conferences around the world. During his keynote presentation at OSCMS 2007, he presented a security vulnerability in each of the projects represented at the conference that year. Lerdorf also appeared at the WeAreDevelopers Conferences 2017 and 2019, making a speech on the history of PHP, the new PHP 7 release in 2017, and the 25 years of PHP.

Award

In 2003, Lerdorf was named in the ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

References

External links

*
Rasmus Lerdorf
at

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lerdorf, Rasmus Greenlandic Inuit people Greenlandic people of Danish descent Danish computer scientists Greenlandic emigrants to Canada Free software programmers University of Waterloo alumni King City Secondary School alumni People from Qaasuitsup 1968 births Living people Web developers PHP writers Programming language designers Danish computer programmers People from Qeqertarsuaq 20th-century Canadian scientists 21st-century Canadian scientists

Early life and education

Career

Award

See also

References

External links