Science Quote by Rasmus Lerdorf

Rasmus Lerdorf’s line lands like a drive-by in a comment thread: half self-own, half flex, delivered with the disarming grin of a smiley. The first move is crowd control. “For all the folks getting excited about my quotes” frames the attention as slightly absurd, a mini-backlash against the cult of the pithy tech aphorism. He’s not offering wisdom from the mountaintop; he’s mocking the idea that his offhand remarks deserve reverence.

Then comes the bait-and-switch: “Yes, I am a terrible coder” signals humility, but it’s engineered humility. In tech culture, admitting incompetence can be a status move when your resume already screams credibility. Lerdorf can afford to say it because he’s the PHP guy; the admission reads less like confession and more like: I’ve shipped, you’ve opined.

The kicker, “but I am probably still better than you :)”, is the real payload. It punctures the performative critique that often surrounds prominent builders: the swarm of commenters who audit code style, language decisions, or “best practices” from a safe distance. The smiley matters. It softens the punch just enough to keep it in the register of locker-room teasing, not outright contempt, while still reasserting hierarchy.

Contextually, it’s classic open-source friction: creators vs. spectators, shipping vs. snarking, imperfect tools vs. perfect rhetoric. The quote works because it refuses sanctimony. It acknowledges messiness, then dares the audience to confuse taste with ability.