I was looking into the origin of PHP, thinking that when it came out
the acronym stood for Pretty HTML Pages. I know at some point the
people using it did not think that was cool, so they changed the
acronym to mean other things, settling on the recursive one you see on
wikipedia and such today. What really surprised me was that I could
not find any sites that said that the history was that PHP stands for
Pretty HTML Pages (or Pretty Hypertext Pages). Does anyone else recall
what PHP stood for when it originally came out?

I'm wondering whether

a) I thought the acronym stood for Pretty HTML Pages or Pretty
Hypertext Pages, but it never did.

b) Someone worked to eliminate this actual history of PHP and the
original meaning of the acronym from web sites

c) This information was never recorded on the web, just something
those of us reading trade papers in the 90's might recall

d) I am not googling for the right things in order to find this
information

e) Other?

Does anyone know? --dawn

On 2010-09-08 18:44:49 -0400, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:


I don't know why anyone would think this. I recall it pretty much as
described here;

http://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php

--
Kevin Powick

On Sep 8, 6:03*pm, Kevin Powick <nos... (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote:
Ah, that sparked the memory, even if not on that page It was "Pretty
Home Page" -- that is what I heard back then, not "Pretty HTML Page."
Yup, now I get some google hits. Thanks Kevin. --dawn

On 2010-09-08 19:53:32 -0400, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

Wha?? It seems you have "Pretty" on the brain. Read it again.
Nowhere does the word "Pretty" appear on that page.

It was originally called "PERSONAL Home Page Tools".

--
Kevin Powick

At some level I still believe (though of course it is completely
unsubstantiated) that "PHP" meant "People Hate Perl". :-)

On Sep 8, 9:28*pm, Kevin Powick <nos... (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote:
Yup, I hear you Kevin. I was alive at that time too, and I know there
were people saying that PHP stood for Pretty <something> Pages, now
recalling it was Pretty Home Pages. I do not know if the author called
it that, but my understanding at the time was that this was the
original name from the author and that he switched it. I do not know
that this is accurate, I do know that this is what I heard at the
time. Apparently I am not the only person who heard this. I have only
found it as anecdotes so far like in a comment on this page

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...developer.html

I cannot rule out that it was originally Pretty Home Page from what I
have read, and I didn't just make up the word "Pretty" in there. --
dawn

On 2010-09-09 08:50:25 -0400, Kevin King <kevin (AT) precisonline (DOT) com> said:

This I could understand.

--
Kevin Powick

On 2010-09-09 08:55:41 -0400, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:


Well, you're not alone. The following search term in Google (php +
"pretty home page") gets a few hits, often people debating Pretty vs
Personal.

Since there wouldn't be any real reason to rewrite history, I don't
know why people would not accept the official historical account posted
on the PHP website itself.

--
Kevin Powick

dawn wrote:
Kevin provided the Google search term but here's a link that shows
there are others who have mentioned Pretty Home Pages:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2BPH...+home+pages%22

Or, ref: http://tinyurl.com/2uwdtx4
Book "Intrusion Detection with SNORT, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ACID"
From 2003
click Features
scroll down to chapter 6
It does say "ACID uses PHP (Pretty Home Page) scripting language".
OMG, it's written in a book! But that doesn't mean it's right.

Or might you have this confused with PGP = Pretty Good Privacy which
is a real name?

Or perhaps you saw someone wearing a shirt saying:
Pretty
Hot
Programmer
?
http://tinyurl.com/335tvpe

I kinda like Pretty Horrible Product or Pretty Horrendous Programming,
and People Hate Perl is kinda sweet too. BTW, IMO it's a good thing
Larry Wall (author of Perl) didn't name Perl after his wife Gloria as
he originally considered.

In the end ... PHP is a language, use it or don't.

T

On 2010-09-09 16:19:03 -0400, Tony Gravagno <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid> said:

Kind of like what's often seen with Pick Basic code eh?

Despite what they think, most website designers are not programmers,
just like most business people aren't either.

Most often the problem is the "craftsman", not the tool they are using.

--
Kevin Powick