From this entry over on Christian Stocker's Blog (bitflux): I started with PHP/FI 2.0 some time in 1996 in my free time during my studies at the ETH Zurich. A fast internet connection and some unofficial, but free hosting there helped a lot in getting into the whole Web/PHP-thingie. After using perl for my first programming experiences, PHP came like a godsend and I appreciated all the features it had every beginner enjoys still today.

[...] Looks like Rasmus really changed also my life, and not only Zak's. And I can't say it better than Zak, so I just quote him here: "Rasmus really did a great thing by inventing, sharing and nurturing PHP. While many, many people made it all happen, Rasmus (and, indirectly, Rasmus' wife Christine) is the baling wire and duct tape that held it all together."

So, celebrate tomorrow (June 7th) with the entire PHP community for this wonderful, crazy decade that gave birth to one of the most powerful, flexible, easy-to-use web languages out there!

Also, be sure to check out these other comments on these past ten years:

• Zak Greant's comments
• what Derick Rethans has to say
• Davey Shafik's look back
• John Coggeshall's look at "if it wasn't for PHP..."
• Lukas Smith remembers
• Wez Furlong remembers his contributions
• John Lim reminisces
• Christian Wenz on his first dealings with PHP
• Andrei Zmievski looks forward to ten more great years
• George Schlossnagle remembers his first experiences
• Ilia Alshanetsky walks down memory lane
• Greg Beaver gets all "warm and fuzzy" about 10 years
• NuCleuZ joins in the celebration
• Sebastian Bergmann looks at a little history
• Bjorn Schotte gives us a timeline
• Tobias Schlitt remembers and gives a list of his own links
• PHP Magazine gives its own celebratory note
• PHP Magazine gives its own celebratory note
• Chris Shiflett gives his thanks
• Ben Ramsey shares a lengthy look back
• Ilovejackdaniels.com's short 'happy birthday' message
• Jason Sweat looks back at his last ten years
• a note from the Atlanta PHP Group
• Richard Heyes looks at 20 years (yes, 20) of PHP (he "looks back" from the future)
• DynamicWebPages.de looks back too