Rasmus Lerdorf
Early Life and Education
Rasmus Lerdorf was born on November 22, 1968, in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland. He moved to Denmark in his early years and later to Canada. Lerdorf completed his high school education in King City, Ontario. He then pursued a Bachelor's degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Career
Lerdorf started his career as an infrastructure engineer at Yahoo! Inc. in 2002. Prior to this, he had worked on several projects, including the creation of a tool for managing his online resume and related documents. This tool, initially named 'Personal Home Page Tools', was the precursor to what is now known as PHP.
PHP Development
In 1995, Lerdorf released the first version of PHP, then known as 'Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)'. This suite of scripts was initially designed to track visits to his online resume. However, it quickly evolved into a more comprehensive tool for creating dynamic web pages.
In 1997, two Israeli developers, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, rewrote the parser for PHP and formed the base of PHP 3. They also founded Zend Technologies, which has since been at the forefront of PHP development. Lerdorf is an active contributor to PHP and continues to participate in its development.
Contributions to Open Source
Apart from PHP, Lerdorf has made significant contributions to several other open source projects. He is known for his work on the Apache project and has contributed to the development of the SQLite database system.
Awards and Recognition
Lerdorf has received numerous awards and recognitions for his contributions to the field of web development. In 2003, he was awarded the Free Software Foundation's Award for the Advancement of Free Software. In 2014, he was recognized by O'Reilly Media with a Web Platform Award for his work on PHP.
Personal Life
Lerdorf is a Danish-Canadian and speaks multiple languages, including Danish, Greenlandic, and English. He is known for his straightforward and practical approach to programming, often emphasizing the importance of understanding the problem before writing code.