Julia EvansDec 19, 2024

I don't know if it's possible to get a good answer to this but: if you learned how to make websites with, like, users who can login and do things where the website stores stuff in a database, without doing it as a job, how did you do it?

I feel like in principle I know all of the basic pieces (HTTP, HTML, CSS, SQL, CORS, various programming languages, etc), but also somehow it still feels extremely hard to me

(no more replies please there are enough)

Show threadJan Lehnardt Dec 19, 2024
@b0rk from online tutorials and the php documentation in ~2000.
Show threadBen RamseyDec 20, 2024

@janl @b0rk I sometimes think if I were starting out now, it might be much more difficult.

Back in the day, it was easy-peasy: shared hosting with PHP, database, and FTP access. I’d just upload files, see what worked and what broke, rinse, repeat.

Show threadJulia EvansDec 20, 2024

@ramsey @janl i'm not sure I'll ever understand the "it was so easy to develop with PHP + FTP" thing, it kind of feels like you had to be there

(it sounds hard to me, like developing with no version control?? no push to deploy? no local dev environment?)

Show threadThomas Casteleyn
@b0rk @ramsey @janl I think you’re making it difficult. Imagine having nothing like these set up, so you have nothing. Then the easiest to do is to upload a file and see in the browser what it does. All these extra steps you’re mentioning need to be set up and configured correctly before you can do anything. Later on there was also #WAMP and #LAMP so you could test the file before uploading. #php
Dec 20, 2024 at 7:06amWeb
Show threadDavey Shafik 🦁🐉🏳️‍🌈Dec 20, 2024

@Hipska @b0rk @ramsey @janl Also, don't forget there was no package managers, no compilation steps, etc.

At best, you use PEAR to add packages and it was inlcuded in the source folder you uploaded. Just update the code and refresh the browser and you got an error, or not. Worst of all, a white screen.

Heck, you often didn't even have logs! Certainly none you wrote to yourself, it just wasn't a thing. If you were lucky you had access to the PHP logs for your vhost.