The counter on the website showed 454.
I reloaded the page.
It became 455.
What sorcery was this?
Was there someone sitting behind the website, watching everyone arrive and manually editing the page to update the number?
That couldn’t be right. Could it?
My first encounter with the web
My tech life—or IT life, as we called it—began in 1996, during my second year at NTU.
I attended a short HTML course. That course sent me down the joyfully slippery slope of creating web pages.
I was happy. I was exhilarated!
I started creating websites all over the place: for myself, for friends and eventually for companies that paid me some extra pocket money.
I was doing it because…I just could!
I had found my passion. Perhaps I had even found my calling.
But as I explored more websites, I began seeing things that puzzled me.
There was that visitor counter, for example. It changed whenever the page was reloaded.
News websites displayed the current date at the top of the page. At first, I imagined that someone must be editing the website at midnight every day just to replace yesterday’s date with today’s.
That seemed like a lot of unnecessary work.
Then, one fine day, I discovered the answer: dynamic web pages.
Websites that could change themselves
Until then, I had only understood static web pages.
A static web page displays whatever the developer placed on it. Unless somebody edits the page, it remains the same today, tomorrow and potentially forever.
A dynamic page is different.
You can tell it to display today’s date. Tomorrow, without anybody touching the page, it will display tomorrow’s date.
You can program it to show the date from three days ago or three days from now. You can display a different photograph every day—or even every hour.
You could make a website respond, calculate, remember and change.
All of this was possible through programming.
Suddenly, a website was no longer merely a page containing words and pictures. It could actually do things.
I had to learn how.
Discovering PHP
To create these magical dynamic pages, I needed to learn a programming language.
As I explored the web-development world of the late 1990s, one name kept appearing: PHP.
PHP became my answer.
No more manually typing a date into a page like this:
20 October 1998I could write something like:
<?php echo date('j F Y'); ?>The page would display today’s date today, tomorrow’s date tomorrow, and continue doing so without waiting for me to update it manually.
I was glowing with glee.
But first, I had to learn the language.
Learning PHP against the library clock
I have always been an avid library-goer. Oh yes.
At the library, I discovered a popular series of technical books with titles along the lines of:
Learn X in 30 Days.
There was one for almost every subject imaginable. I picked up a PHP book—I remember its title as something like Learn PHP in 30 Days.
I liked the format because it established the goal for you:
Here is where you are now.
Here is where you will be in 30 days.
There was only one problem.
The borrowing period for a library book was 21 days.
So, I finished the book well before the promised 30 days.
Sometimes, restrictions in life push us to excel further—and faster—don’t they?
My first PHP creation
One of the first useful PHP features I built was a quotation section for my own website.
Every time someone loaded the page, it displayed a quotation. But this wasn’t just an ordinary quotation.
It was a scrolling quotation displayed near the top of the page.
A note to younger readers: scrolling text was a BIG thing back then.
If your website had scrolling text, it meant you were in the big league—or at least you believed you were.
To be technically accurate, the scrolling effect itself happened in the browser. PHP’s job was to read from a text file containing many quotations and select one to display whenever the page loaded.
It felt marvellous.
The page was making a decision. It was producing something that I had not manually placed there for that particular visitor.
I had created something dynamic.
My programming superpower
Do you remember those scenes in which Spider-Man has only just discovered what he can do?
He experiments with his powers. He jumps around, tests his abilities and discovers how far he can push them.
That was what I was doing with PHP.
I felt that I had acquired the superpower of programming. Most people around me didn’t know how it worked. They might not even have realised what was happening behind a web page.
But I did.
With this new power, I began building dynamic websites for clients.
In those days, many businesses were already delighted to find a freelancer who could build them an affordable static website. Imagine their reaction when that same freelancer could add a visitor counter, contact form or other dynamic features.
I progressed from smaller features to bulletin boards, contact forms and CRM systems.
My first substantial PHP application was a membership section for a website. By then, I was no longer merely adding clever effects to web pages. I was building actual systems.
Businesses were willing to pay meaningful money for them too.
There is a saying that when you are doing something you love and being paid for it, you never have to work a day in your life.
That was how it felt.
Thirty years later
My journey into the web began in 1996. Thirty years have now passed.
And yes, I still use PHP.
That might surprise some people. I still have clients asking me to manage their PHP websites.
It may shock you, but I stopped being shocked a long time ago.
Some developers dismiss PHP as old-fashioned. My blunt reaction is that such dismissal is foolish.
I understand why developers pursue the newest languages and frameworks. If their goal is to secure particular jobs, build fashionable expertise or earn higher salaries, keeping up with industry demand makes perfect sense.
What I question is the assumption that a newer framework automatically solves a business owner’s problem better.
Can PHP fulfil the business requirement?
Can it do so reliably, affordably and maintainably?
If the answer is yes, why should its age make it unsuitable?
Security is not simply a contest between old and new technologies either. Maintained versions of PHP continue receiving fixes and security updates. Of course, the language alone cannot rescue badly written code, outdated software or a neglected server—but neither can a fashionable framework.
PHP in the age of AI
Now, AI can write code.
That has changed my relationship with programming.
I have had to let go of some of the hardcore work, progressively and bit by bit. It is a love-hate experience.
There is satisfaction in solving a programming problem yourself—in understanding every instruction and watching your own logic come alive. Handing some of that work to AI can feel like surrendering part of the superpower I spent decades developing.
At the same time, AI allows me to build faster, attempt more ambitious projects and spend more time thinking about what should be created instead of manually producing every line.
That is life. Technologies change. Our roles change with them.
But PHP will always have a special place in my story.
It was not merely the first programming language I learnt. It was the language that showed me that something I imagined could be turned into something that actually worked.
PHP helped me discover my programming superpower.
AI may be changing how I use that power, but PHP was where I first found it.
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