It was 1999 & I was living in Paris & working as helpdesk support for Anheuser-Busch… proper hardware IT-like helpdesk. I was an imposter… didn't know what I was doing, but I was loving it.
My free local dial-up company, free.fr, had some obscure news item next to their webmail login that said their free hosting now included support for PHP3 & MySQL.
I didn't know what the hell these things were, but I was intrigued. I skipped over to the Eyrolles book store in Saint Michel & bought a couple of books.
Well, the one on PHP was the first edition of Core PHP Programming by Leon Atkinson. I read it from cover to cover like a novel.
This PHP script was the first one in the book, and after finally getting PHP & Cygwin installed on my computer, this was the first script I ever executed ever.
I remember it so clearly, that AHA moment … that's what this shit can do!
3 months later I took my first job as a programmer, & it happened to be where I met my amazing missus. The rest, as they say, is history.
Cheers, Leon.