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`0:05:07`

And I tried quite hard for quite a while to get into it, but it just never clicked. And then I discovered the magic of piracy. And after that I kind of basically just took some time off from learning to program because, well, now suddenly I had access to all sorts of games. So that was…

`0:06:08`

that produced the Commodore 64. And I got the Amiga 500, I think in '87. — Look at this sexy thing that is a sexy machine right there. — This is from an age by the way, where computing wasn't global in the same sense. The different territories had different computers that were popular. The Amiga was really…

`0:07:08`

I got into loops, I got into all these things and I still, I couldn't do it. And on the second attempt, I really got to the point of like, maybe I'm not smart enough, maybe programming is just not for me, maybe it's too much math. Like I like math in this sort…

`0:08:09`

I don't even understand how you go from this to Amiga demos, for example. That was the big thing with the Amiga. It had this wonderful demo scene in Europe. It's this really interesting period of time in Amiga's history where you had all these programmers spread out mostly all over Europe who would…

`0:09:11`

And I was enamored with that whole scene. I was enamored with what they were able to create and I just wanted to be a part of it even though I kind of didn't have any skills to contribute. And that's how I got into running BBSs. I didn't learn programming then and I…

`0:10:11`

Why the hell is a 14-year-old having three phone lines into their tiny little bedroom? What's going on here? Why are all these modems blinking red and black and making funny sounds?" — Did your parents know? — They did and they didn't. They knew I had the phone lines. They knew I had the…

`0:11:14`

and I bought one game. Because that was what I could afford. I got "After Burner II." I dunno if you've ever played that game. It's pretty bad implementation on the second Master System, but it was like 600 crowners. And I was making money at that time doing newspaper delivery. I had to do…

`0:12:15`

But I traveled from Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark to Aarhus this tiny little town in Jutland on the train with a bunch of dudes who were like late teens and their 20s. I'm 14 years old. I'm lugging my 14-inch CRT monitor with my computer in the back to go to the party…

`0:13:15`

It's infectious. It was part of that pang I felt then going like, oh man, why can't I figure this out? I mean, why can't I even figure out EasyAMOS? It's kind of frustrating. — But on your third attempt, you a little more successful? — So third attempt is when I start getting it…

`0:14:20`

to wanna learn the program because I got a positive experience. All the other experiences I had with programming was I'd spend hours typing something in, I'd click Run and it wouldn't work. And I'd get an error message that made no sense to me as a kid, either at six or seven…

`0:15:20`

And they're looking at you, "You're a journalist?" Yeah, can I borrow some games? Because this was when games moved on to the PlayStation and these other things. You couldn't just as easily pirate, at least not at first. So I went down there, did all that, and that started the journey of the…

`0:16:23`

that I thought I can do this. — So would it be fair to say that we wouldn't have DHH without PHP, and therefore you owe all of your success to PHP? — 100% that's true. And it's even better than that because as PHP to me didn't just give a start in terms of…

`0:17:24`

in the mid to late '90s. How did we lose the sensibilities that allowed us to not just work this way but get new people into the industry to give them that was success experiences that I had. Adding a freaking blink tag to an HTML page, FTPing a PHP page to an Apache web server without…

`0:18:25`

Now that's a bit of a character. There's more to it. And there's things you can learn from more sophisticated ways of thinking about this. But there's still an ideal here, which is why I was so happy you had Pieter Levels on, because he still basically works like this. And I look…

`0:19:27`

You just FTP it. I knew they knew how to do FTP. And then after the third time I had overridden their changes. I was like, goddammit. I gotta teach Jason CBS to not do that again. But I think there's still way more truth to the fact that we can work the way we did…

`0:20:29`

than what they were in the '90s. So shouldn't we be able to work in even easier ways? We should be looking back on the '90s ago, like, oh, that was way too complicated. Now we have more sophisticated technology that's way faster and it allows us to work in these easier to use ways…

`0:21:32`

which is the JavaScript scene. And I don't say that as someone who hate JavaScript. I mean, I often joke that JavaScript. It's my second favorite program language. It's a very distant second. Ruby is by far and away number one, but I actually like JavaScript. I don't think it's a bad…

`0:22:32`

to be able to use more modern ways of programming with a browser that was seen as stuck with an ancient version of JavaScript that no one actually wanted to work with. And that made sense to me, but it was also deeply unpleasant. And I remember thinking during that time, the dark ages, as I refer…

`0:23:37`

we had landed ourselves in. Why does everything break all the time? I mean, the joke wouldn't be just that the software would break, that would annoy me personally. But then I'd go on Hacker News and I'd see some thread on the latest JavaScript release of some framework. And the thread would be…

`0:24:38`

Some of it was an overhang all the way back from IE5. So IE5 essentially put the whole internet development experience into a deep freeze, because Microsoft won the browser wars in the mid 2000s, and then they basically disbanded their browser development team. 'Cause they're like, "All right, job done. We don't need any…