--- title: 🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield description: An interview with Larry Garfield, a prominent PHP contributor, as part of a PHP 30th anniversary series. Larry recounts his journey from PHP 3 in 1999 through... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/9zpfewc8a twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: 🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield | daily.dev og:description: An interview with Larry Garfield, a prominent PHP contributor, as part of a PHP 30th anniversary series. Larry recounts his journey from PHP 3 in 1999 through... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/9zpfewc8a og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/9zpfEwC8A.png og:image:alt: Post cover image og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # 🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield **[PHP Dev](https://daily.dev/sources/phpdev)** · [@damienseguy](https://daily.dev/damienseguy) · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An interview with Larry Garfield, a prominent PHP contributor, as part of a PHP 30th anniversary series. Larry recounts his journey from PHP 3 in 1999 through leading the GoPHP5 campaign, modernizing Drupal 8, co-authoring key RFCs (Enums, Property Hooks, Pipe Operator), and advocating for functional programming in PHP. He discusses PHP's most significant recent advancements including constructor property promotion, named arguments, and property hooks; the challenges facing new core contributors; the critical role of the PHP Foundation; PHP's persistent image problem despite being a modern, capable language; and his vision for persistent-process PHP with async support and websockets as the most important technical frontier ahead. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#php](https://daily.dev/tags/php), [#cms](https://daily.dev/tags/cms), [#functional-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/functional-programming) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/9zpfewc8a) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/9zpfewc8a","headline":"🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield","text":"Shared: 🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/9zpfewc8a","datePublished":"2026-02-19T23:59:51.407Z","dateModified":"2026-02-19T23:59:51.414Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Damien seguy","url":"https://daily.dev/damienseguy","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--nPbjKqol--/f_auto,q_auto/v1698422671/avatars/avatar_G85JhYcDxAg024Omc8Rlp","description":"PHP developer passionate about deep language knowledge, testing, static analysis, and sustainable it","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Exakat","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--ibtl6fze--/f_auto/v1749051132/companies/exakat"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"EndorseAction"},"userInteractionCount":38000}},"image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--foaA6JGU--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2004","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"sharedContent":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/uuxEYKdBM"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://daily.dev/squads/phpdev","name":"PHP Dev"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"PHP Dev","item":"https://daily.dev/squads/phpdev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"🐘 PHP 30 Years - A Conversation with Larry Garfield"}]} ```